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THE EASTERN QUESTION. 



A BRIEF 



HISTORY OF RUSSIA, 



FROM THE SMALL BEGINNINGS OF THE NATION 
TO THE PRESENT VAST PROPORTIONS 
OF THE EMPIRE; 

WITH ACCOUNTS OF THE SUCCESSIVE DYNASTIES. 



FRANCES A. SHAW. 



a 




18?"?^ 



BOSTONr^— - 
JAMES R. OSGOOD AND COMPANY, 

Late Ticknor & Fields, and Fields, Osgood, & Co. 

1877. 



Copyright, 1877, 
By JAMES R. OSGOOD & CO. 



FRANKLIN PRESS i 
SAND, AYERY, AND COMPANY* 

BOSTON* 



SOVEREIGNS OF RUSSIA. 



Page. 

1. Oleg, 879-912 6 

2. Igor, 912-945 ......... 7 

3. Queen Olga, 945-957 ........ 3 

4. Sviatoslav, 957-972 8 

5. Vladimir the Great, 980-1015 .... 9 

6. Jaroslav, 102 6-1 05 4 . 11 

7. Vladimir II. (Monomachus), 1113-1126 . 12 

8. Mstislas, 1126-1132 14 

9. Alexander-Nevsky, 1 252-1 262 . . . . 15 
10. Ivan III. (The Great), 1462-1505 ... 15 
11 Vassili III., 1505-1533 18 

12. Helena. . 19 

13. Ivan the Terrible, 1533-1584 .... 20 

14. Feodor, 1584-1598 30 

15. Godunof, 1598-1604 . 31 

16. Dmitri the Impostor, 1605 32 

3 



4 SOVEREIGNS OF RUSSIA. 

Page. 

17. Vassili Shuiski, 1606-16 10 46 

18. Michael Romanoff, 1613-1645 .... 47 

19. Alexis, 1645-1676 48 

20. Feodor III., 1676-1682 49 

21. Peter the Great, 1 689-1 725 52 

22. Catherine, 1725-1727 61 

23. Peter II., 1727-1730 67 

24. Anna, 1730-1740 68 

25. Elizabeth, 1741-1762 69 

26. Peter III., 1762 70 

27. Catherine the Great, 1 762-1 796 ... 71 

28. Paul I., 1796-1801 81 

29. Alexander I., 1801-1825 84 

30. Nicholas I., 1825-1855 100 

31. Alexander II., 1855- 115 



A. Brief History of Russia. 



— 

Russia, that giant empire, which is of so com- 
batively recent a date that its past seems but a 
la\ in the annals of Europe, has a history cruel 
,nd sanguinary indeed, but full of thrilling and 
wonderful events. 

With an area of more than eight million square 
niles, it clasps four seas, and one-third of Europe 
md Asia, in its far-reaching arms, and contains 
i population of nearly ninety million souls, of 
widely diverse races and customs, yet all so 
imited as to form one homogeneous whole. For 
two and a half centuries Russia was under Tartar 
rule ; and to this day it unites the two totally un- 
like civilizations of the Orient and the Occident. 

The earliest known inhabitants of Russia were 
the Scythians in the south, the Slavonians in the 
interior, and the Finns toward the north. To 
these three great nations belonged many smaller 

5 



6 A BRIEF HISTORY OF RUSSIA. 



tribes ; and among them were the Russ, or Ros- 
sani, from whom the country takes its name. 

Before the ninth century, Novgorod, a republic 
lying near the Gulf of Finland, had risen to great 
prominence ; and its capital city of the same 
name, " the republican mother of a despotic em- 
pire/' had become so powerful that it was a com- 
mon saying among the people, " Who dare op- 
pose God and Novgorod the Great ? " 

But dissension arose, foreign invasion threat- 
ened, and assistance was asked of Rurik, a noted 
Varangian chief. It proved such assistance as 
might have been expected of an ambitious and 
unscrupulous warrior. Rurik repelled the invad- 
ers, overawed the rebellious factions, made him- 
self master of the country, and laid broad and 
deep the foundations of the Russian Empire. 
After a reign of fifteen years, signalized by con- 
quests and victories, Rurik died, leaving the 
government to his infant son Igor, Oleg, his 
kinsman, being appointed regent. 

OLEG, 879-912. 

Oleg lived but for the aggrandizement of his 
country ; and he was entirely unscrupulous in 



A BRIEF HISTORY OF RUSSIA. 7 

regard to the means employed in securing this, the 
one purpose of his heart, As Kief had a milder 
climate and was farther advanced in civilization 
than Novgorod, he resolved to make it his capi- 
tal j and, under pretence of desiring to treat with 
its two princes, he drew them into an ambuscade, 
and had them put to death. 

Exulting in the success of his nefarious deed, 
"Let Kief henceforth be the mother of all Rus- 1 
sian cities," he said; and it remained for three 
and a half centuries the capital of the empire. 



IGOR, 912-945. 

Oleg reigned thirty-three years, and left the 
government, enlarged and consolidated, to Igor, 
who seems never to have complained, though he 
was nearly forty years of age when he succeeded 
to his father's throne. He was a well-meaning 
though inefficient sovereign; but his wife, Olga, 
a woman of more than ordinary talent and ambi- 
tion, ruled her husband while he lived, and at his 
death became regent, and guardian of their young 
son and heir. 



8 



A BRIEF HISTORY OF RUSSIA. 



QUEEN OLGA, 945-957, 

is a favorite subject of old Russian romance and 
ballad literature. She is represented as having 
been a veiy beautiful peasant-girl, whom Igor 
met while travelling through the country in dis- 
guise, and married, without disclosing his true 
rank. 

The first of Russian sovereigns to renounce 
Paganism, she publicly embraced Christianity at 
Constantinople, and received baptism, the Greek 
emperor and empress acting as her sponsors. A 
grand entertainment followed the interesting cere- 
mony, the table at which Olga and her sponsors 
sat being of solid gold. 

Olga tried to introduce the Greek ritual among 
her people, but her efforts were unavailing. They 
were wedded to the old superstitions, and to them 
Perune, the chief of Russian deities, was more 
than the God of the Bible. 

SVIATOSLAV, 957-972. 

Sviatoslav, the heir to the throne, to his moth- 
er's great sorrow remained true to the Pagan 
deities of his ancestors ; but he was a chivalrous, 



A BRIEF HISTORY OF RUSSIA. 9 

valiant prince, the idol of his army, whose dan- 
gers and privations he shared, faring in all re- 
spects like the humblest soldier of the ranks. 
As sovereign he won a name in war and con- 
quest, and left Russia larger and more power- 
ful than he found it. At his death, the realm 
was divided among his three sons, who fought 
for the supremacy, until, in 980, Vladimir, the 
youngest, gained sole dominion. 

VLADIMIR THE GREAT, 980-1015. 

On the day of his baptism into the Greek 
Church, Vladimir received the name of Basilius ; 
and, if we may credit the Russian annals, twenty 
thousand of his subjects were baptized on the 
same day with him. 

As a reward for his acceptance of the new faith, 
Vladimir received in marriage Anne, the sister of 
the Greek emperor. Russia henceforth belonged 
to the patriarchate of Constantinople, and Kief 
became the nursing mother of the still feeble 
church, just transplanted to a foreign and uncon- 
genial soil. 

Under this reign, the idols of Paganism were 
destroyed, churches were built, learning and the 



I o A BRIEF HIS TOR Y OF R USSIA. 

arts were cultivated, and Russia was raised to the 
highest pitch of Gothic glory. " Sunny Prince 
Vladimir " and his valiant deeds for centuries re- 
mained a favorite theme for minstrelsy; and his 
epoch is considered the heroic age of Russian 
history. 

Historians, recognizing the superiority of Vladi- 
mir to the rude age in which he lived, have sur- 
named him "the Great and the names of both 
Olga and Vladimir Basilius stand high on the 
Greek calendar of saints. 

But the sunlight of impartial truth must too 
often dispel the poetic nimbus which romance and 
tradition throw around the heroes and heroines, 
the saints, even, of the past ; and sober history 
tells us that Saint Olga, though far in advance 
of her time, was a woman who could be both 
cruel and revengeful ; that Saint Vladimir, with 
all his rude greatness and many chivalric quali- 
ties, was a fratricide and a polygamist. 

At his death,. in 1015, Vladimir committed the 
fatal error of dividing the empire among his seven 
sons. His example being followed by subsequent 
rulers, the history of Russia until the fifteenth 
century is a record of anarchy and bloodshed. 



A BRIEF HISTORY OF RUSSIA. n 



" In thus dividing his empire," says the historian 
Muller, " Vladimir the Great retarded the advance- 
ment of commerce and letters, diminished the 
political importance of Russia, and replunged its 
people into the barbarism from which they were 
just beginning to emerge." 

After long and sanguinary warfare among the 
rival brothers and their partisans, Jaroslav and 
Mstislas, in 1026, jointly assumed the govern- 
ment, and ruled amicably for ten years, when 
Mstislas died, leaving his brother sole sovereign 
of this shapeless and colossal empire. 

JAROSLAV, 1026-1054, 

in Russian annals is honored with the surname 
of "the Wise." He gave the first code of laws 
to his country ; and Russia reveres in him not 
only a wise legislator, but an enlightened and 
merciful sovereign. He established schools ; and, 
though he fostered the Greek Church, he allowed 
no religious persecution. He caused the Holy 
Scriptures to be translated into the Slavonic 
tongue, transcribing several copies with his own 
hand. 

He was a politic prince, and strengthened his 



12 A BRIEF HISTORY OF RUSSIA. 



government by brilliant matrimonial alliances. 
His sister became Queen of Poland ; his three 
daughters, queens of Norway, France, and Hun- 
gary ; while his daughters-in-law were Greek, Ger- 
man, and English princesses. 

This sovereign, so wise and far-seeing in all 
else, at his death, after a reign of thirty-five 
years, partitioned the empire among his five sons, 
who fought against one another, and, dying, be- 
queathed the unnatural strife to their descendants. 

VLADIMIR II. (Monomachus), 1113-1125. 

Jaroslav died in 1054, and, during the next 
hundred and eighty years, seventeen princes sat 
upon the throne, among all of whom we find but 
one truly great man, Vladimir Monomachus, who 
was crowned in 11 14. Amid the darkness and 
barbarism of his age he stands forth a colossal 
figure, the tutelary genius of Russia. He waged 
no wars but those the safety of his country de- 
manded; and, though his heroism on the field 
was never called in question, it was by deeds -of 
moral heroism that he won his fairest laurels. 

Upon the character of this great and good 
sovereign there rests no stain. On his death-bed 



A BRIEF HISTORY OF RUSSIA, 13 

he wrote out a brief record of his life, inter- 
spersed with much good advice, and many wise 
maxims for his children. A few of these maxims 
will suffice as an index to the character and 
policy of this just man : — 

" Be fathers to the orphan, be yourselves judges 
for the widow. Put to death neither the inno- 
cent nor the guilty ; for nothing is more sacred 
than the life and soul of a Christian. My dear 
children, praise God and love men. It is neither 
fasting, nor solitude, nor monastic vows, that can 
give you eternal life : it is beneficence alone." 

Not being in the direct line of succession, 
Monomachus twice refused the crown bequeathed 
to him by the dying king Vszevolod, and urged 
upon him by the almost unanimous voice of the 
people ; and he only accepted it at last to save 
his country from fratricidal strife and ruin. He 
reigned thirteen years ; and so great was his 
popularity at home and abroad, that the Greek 
emperor sent him the ensigns of the imperial dig- 
nity, — a golden tiara set with diamonds, a cross 
and sceptre of gold, with other costly gifts, as a 
token that he considered the Russian prince his 
equal. 



14 A BRIEF HISTORY OF RUSSIA. 



MSTISLAS, 1126-1132. 

The first wife of Monomachus was Gyda, 
daughter of Harold, the last Saxon king of Eng- 
land. Mstislas, the son of this marriage, suc- 
ceeded to the throne. He inherited the virtues 
of both parents, and, in his too brief reign of six 
years, carried out the wise, pacific policy of his 
father. After his death, chaos came again to 
Russia. In the course of thirty-two years, eleven 
princes grasped the sceptre, each holding it only 
until another more powerful wrested it from his 
hand. 

The Poles, taking advantage of the distracted 
state of affairs, invaded the empire which the 
Tartars, under Ghengis Khan, at length subdued. 
During the two and a half centuries of Russia's 
subjection to the Tartar yoke, its sovereigns held 
their domains only as appanages from the khan, 
to whom they were compelled to make occasional 
journeys, consuming a year's time, in order that 
they might humbly sue for the right of governing. 
On these visits they were treated in the most 
insulting manner, being allowed to present their 
petitions to the khan only when prostrate on the 



A BRIEF HISTORY OF RUSSIA. 15 

ground at his feet. The Tartars also exacted 
large tribute, under conditions most galling to 
the national pride. 

ALEXANDER-NEVSKY, 1252-1262. 

From the time of the first Tartar invasion, in 
1237, until the accession of Ivan III., in 1462, 
Russian history is a chaos of uncertainties and 
traditions, through which looms up the figure 
of one great and good sovereign, — Alexander- 
Nevsky. He drove back the Swedes, the Ger- 
mans, and the Lithuanians, who flung themselves 
upon the tottering empire ; he made three weary 
journeys to Asia to conciliate the khan, who had 
it in his power at any moment to crush the 
already humiliated and conquered nation. On 
his return from the last journey he died, a 
martyr to his patriotic zeal. The Russian Greek 
Church has made a saint of him. Would that all 
her canonized ones were as worthy ! 

IVAN III. (The Great), 1462-1505. 
Before the accession of Ivan III., who was of 
the line of Rurik, and is surnamed " The Great," 
many causes had been at work, tending toward 



1 6 A BRIRF HISTORY OF RUSSIA. 

the liberation of Russia from her degrading Tar- 
tar servitude ; but it was this sovereign who at 
last threw off the detested yoke. Ivan III. was 
the first of Russian emperors to assume the title 
of Czar, — not a corruption of Caesar, as some 
have supposed, but a word from the Persian, sig- 
nifying supreme authority. 

For his second wife Ivan married Sophia, the 
daughter of Constantine, the last Greek emperor. 
When Byzantium fell into the hands of the 
Turks, this princess had sought refuge within 
the sacred walls of Rome ; and the Pope had 
not turned a deaf ear to Ivan's entreaties that 
she might share his Muscovite throne. This 
exalted alliance confirmed his autocracy, and 
enabled him to place upon his ensigns the two- 
headed eagle, type of supreme power. With this 
august Greek princess, the luxurious customs 
of the Orient, the forms and ceremonies of the 
Byzantine court, the arts of Greece and Rome, 
were introduced into Russia. The haughty 
Sophia could ill brook the idea of having her 
husband a vassal of the khan, and compelled to 
submit to his humiliating exactions. She gave 
the czar no peace until he had thrown off the 
galling yoke. 



A BRIEF HISTORY OF RUSSIA. 17 

Ivan III. was a haughty, ambitious prince, who 
sought to raise his throne to an equality with the 
proudest in Europe. Fearing lest the sovereigns 
of older and more enlightened nations might re- 
gard him as a parvenu, he stood very much upon 
his dignity, compelling all who would have deal 
ings with him to treat him as an equal. He 
instructed his ambassador at the Turkish court 
neither to bend the knee to the Sultan, nor to 
yield precedence to any other ambassador. He 
refused one daughter to the King of the Romans, 
and regarded the marriage of another to the 
Margrave of Baden as very much beneath his 
dignity. 

This barbaric Louis XIV. was a most strenu- 
ous advocate of the divine right of kings. He 
declared that ffe had received his throne from 
the high and mighty Trinity, and would not 
degrade himself by accepting titles from any 
prince on earth. During a long and prosperous 
reign he did much to enhance the material great- 
ness of the nation. By the promise of liberal 
rewards, he enticed skilful artificers from abroad. 
He built the Kremlin, and adorned it with all the 
splendors of barbaric art : many other stately- 



1 8 A BRIEF HISTORY OF RUSSIA. 

edifices also rose at his bidding in his capital of 
Moscow, to which the seat of government had 
been removed in the fourteenth century. 

He caused cannon to be made, and adopted 
their use in his armies with great success ; he had 
the mines worked, and silver and copper money 
coined in his own capital ; he established inter- 
course with foreign nations, and first rent the 
veil which separated Russia from the rest of Eu- 
rope. 

Ivan's era was one of pomp and show, of gor- 
geous pageants and entertainments, of Oriental 
forms and ceremonies ; but there was no moral 
element in all this grandeur, nothing that could 
promote the best interests of the people. 

Though personally accused of cowardice, Ivan 
III., through his armies, won some splendid vic- 
tories. During his long reign of forty-three 
years, nineteen thousand square miles were 
added to the territory of Russia, and four million 
souls to its population. 

VASSILI III, 1505-1533. 

Ivan's grandson by his first marriage was heir 
to the throne ; but the haughty autocrat said to 



A BRIEF HISTORY OF RUSSIA. 19 

his boyars, " I will give Russia to whom I think 
proper, and I command you to obey." So, con- 
signing his grandson to perpetual imprisonment, 
he chose for his successor Vassili, the son of the 
Czarina Sophia, who, at his father's death, as- 
sumed the sceptre without the least opposition. 
Ivan III. died in 1506, at the age of sixty-seven ; 
and, four years after, the captivity of the true 
heir, Dmitri, ended in a violent death. Vassili 
strictly followed the policy of his father, and, 
after a reign of twenty-eight years, left the em- 
pire, enlarged and strengthened, to his infant 
son Ivan, Helena his wife being appointed 
regent. 

HELENA, 

the second female sovereign of Russia, — Olga 
being the first, — was a woman of depraved char- 
acter, and entirely under the influence of a fa- 
vorite corrupt as herself. When, after six years 
of crime and misrule, Helena died, none re- 
gretted her ; and no inquiries were instituted as 
to the cause of her death, though it was sup- 
posed to have been from poison. 



20 



A BRIEF HISTORY OF RUSSIA. 



IVAN THE TERRIBLE, 1533-1584. 

The government was now in the hands of a 
council of regency, with Prince Andrew Shuiski 
at its head. Shuiski and his associates were 
unprincipled, designing men, who in every way 
sought to corrupt and brutalize the young czaro- 
witch, and thus render him incapable of reigning. 

Terrible deeds of cruelty were enacted before 
his very eyes ; and, if the lad chanced to show 
favor to any one around him, the life of that 
favored one was instantly in danger. 

His guardians mocked at his better impulses, 
and applauded his crimes. When he tortured 
young animals, or, in his furious drives around 
Moscow, trampled old people and little children 
under his horses' hoofs, they commended him as 
if he had done some brave and chivalrous deed. 
They treated his friends with the greatest indig- 
nity ; and even he, the descendant of so long a 
line of sovereigns, was often the object of abuse 
and contumely. These men seemed to delight in 
visiting on this helpless heir to the throne the 
insults they had received from his mother the 
regent Helena. 



A BRIEF HISTORY OF RUSSIA. 21 



Under such pupilage, all that was good in 
Ivan's nature was repressed, all that was bad 
was stimulated and fostered. He reached his 
fourteenth year, old in wickedness, and ripe for 
revolt against his tormentors and oppressors. He 
declared that he would rule without the aid of a 
council, and, in a momentary fit of rage against 
Andrew Shuiski, ordered him to be thrown to his 
dogs. 

"They have well deserved the repast," he 
said. 

The order was obeyed, and by this horrible 
death the head of the powerful house of Shu- 
iski expiated a life of violence and crime. But 
the Gluiski, another powerful family, now rose to 
ascendency in the state, and exerted a no less 
baleful influence upon the czarowitch. 

In his eighteenth year, after a minority of 
blood and horror, Ivan was crowned czar. His 
atrocities were so great, that the long-suffering 
people at length, driven to desperation, fired 
Moscow in several places at dead of night. 

Ivan awoke amid flame and smoke and the 
imprecations of the populace. At this very mo- 
ment, one Sylvester, a monk who pretended to 



2 2 A BRIEF HISTORY OF RUSSIA. 

divine inspiration, appeared before the young 
czar with an open gospel in one hand, and the 
other raised in the attitude of prophecy. He 
warned Ivan of the wrath of Heaven, which 
was even now visiting his evil deeds, adducing 
certain signs which had recently appeared in 
the sky as tokens of the anger of an offended 
God. Alexis Adashef, the one good man among 
all Ivan's evil counsellors, seconded the monk 
in his efforts at reforming the czar ; but their 
most powerful ally was Anastasia, Ivan's beauti- 
ful young bride, a princess of the Romanoff 
family, a woman of the most sweet and gentle 
disposition, and possessed of a mind superior to 
the age in which she lived. 

Religious fervor and love combined wrought an 
entire change in Ivan's character. He became 
almost a fanatic in his new-born zeal : when 
he took the city of Kazan from the Tartars, 
he changed the mosques into Christian temples, 
and compelled the khan to be baptized. He 
showed himself, also, a progressive sovereign, and 
sincerely desirous of the good of his people. 

But the tiger in his nature was only slumbering 
to awake ere long into tenfold fury. The be- 



A BRIEF HISTORY OF RUSSIA. 23 

neficent influence of Anastasia and Adashef lasted 
thirteen years, and all the greatness and glory of 
Ivan's long reign of half a century are comprised 
within this brief period. 

Anastasia died. Ivan, who was just recover- 
ing from an illness which is supposed to have 
partially crazed his brain, was haunted by an 
unjust suspicion that she had been poisoned, and 
sought to revenge her death on all his subjects. 
From this time, suspicion and terror constantly 
brooded over his darkened soul : he distrusted 
all who approached him, and lived in momentary 
fear of assassination. 

The mad atrocities of his career after Anas- 
tasia's death can be explained only on the 
ground of insanity. These atrocities surpass 
belief, and form the most sickening page of 
Russian history. There those who have a taste 
for horrors can find them in full detail. In 
comparison with Ivan IV., justly called in Rus- 
sian annals " Ivan the Terrible," Caligula and 
Nero become almost respectable. 

One of his most stupendous crimes, and yet 
it was but one among many, was the destruction 
of Novgorod, the mother of Russian cities, — a 



24 A BRIEF HISTORY OF RUSSIA. 

commonwealth older than Florence, and much 
larger than the London of that day. It was a 
city rich in historic memories, and linked with 
the whole past of Russia, whose capital it had 
been six centuries before the Kremlin was built 
at Moscow, ten centuries before St. Petersburg 
rose on the banks of the Neva. There may even 
now be found in the Kremlin a bronze group, 
typifying its reign of a thousand years. 

A proud, a wealthy, a luxurious city, its walls 
embraced a circuit of fifty miles, and it contained 
four hundred thousand souls. This city, " Nov- 
gorod the Great," had offended Ivan by its love of 
liberty, its wealth and independence, but, above 
all, by its hatred of his rule, and its efforts to be 
taken under the protection of Sweden. 

He swore that he would raze Novgorod, and 
sow its site with salt ; and, invading it with an 
army of thirty thousand Tartars, he raged there 
for six weeks like an infuriated tiger. His orders 
to his soldiers were, " Burn, slay, give no quarter 
to old or young ! " With his own hand he aided 
in the wholesale butchery. The streets ran 
blood, the river was choked with the bodies of 
the slain. His victims numbered sixty thousand. 



A BRIEF HISTORY OF RUSSIA. 25 

The greater part of the city was pillaged and 
burned. Novgorod never recovered from the 
catastrophe : it is now an obscure village. 

Other smaller cities shared the same fate ; and 
in Moscow, his own capital, he enacted scenes 
of horror too terrible for description. Often, at 
the closing act of one of his greatest atrocities, 
he would say, piously lifting his eyes to heaven, 
" My dear people, I ask an interest in your 
prayers." 

One of Ivan's martyrs was Philip Prior, a 
priest of great purity of heart and life, who had 
dared rebuke the crimes of the czar to his very 
face. The Greek Church has canonized Philip. 
His remains have been removed to Moscow ; and 
on the day of his coronation every czar of Russia 
must kneel before his shrine, and kiss his feet. 

" Ivan the Terrible " violated all law, human 
and divine. In defiance of the strictest canons 
of his church, he had a plurality of wives. When 
already the husband of seven living wives, he 
aspired to the hand of Queen Elizabeth of Eng- 
land. As that obdurate maiden would not listen 
to his suit, he made a formal offer of his heart 
and hand to one of her ladies of honor, Mary 



-2 6 A BRIEF HISTORY OF RUSSIA. 

Hastings, daughter of the Earl of Huntington. 
But the Lady Mary, though at first dazzled with 
the prospect of a throne, concluded to decline 
the dangerous and doubtful honor; and nothing 
remained to the discomfited wooer but to soothe 
his lacerated affections by putting to death the 
ambassador through whom his matrimonial over- 
tures to the English court had been made. 

No sovereign has ever been so great an enigma 
to historians as Ivan IV. If he was mad, there 
was certainly method in his madness. To him 
Russia owes its complete deliverance from Tartar 
rule. His conquests were many and valuable, 
and in them all he supplanted the crescent by 
the cross. Although personally a coward, his 
arms proved more than a match for the Swedes 
and the Poles. He opened Russia to foreign 
trade, introduced printing, reformed the clergy, 
assembled a parliament to consult upon the com- 
mon weal, and drew up a code of laws in many 
respects admirable. Always terrible to the rich 
and great, he was often a benefactor of the poor. 
It has been said that there were in Ivan two dis- 
tinct beings, — the great man and the wild beast. 

" I am your god, as God is mine/' was his 



A BRIEF HISTORY OF RUSSIA. 27 

common declaration to his subjects. He would 
walk about the streets of Moscow, ordering this 
one to be beaten, that one to be put to death. 
No age, sex, or condition was exempt from his 
fury. In a fit of frenzy he killed with a single 
blow of his iron staff the only one of his three 
sons who was fit to rule, and he was ever after 
consumed by an undying regret : of remorse he 
was incapable. He died soon after, in 1584, 
having reigned fifty years, twenty-six of which 
were one unintermittent fever of fury and re- 
venge. 

" How could the people suffer such a monster 
to live and reign ? " we ask, as we read the 
record of Ivan's appalling crimes ; and we find 
our answer in the character of the Russian peo- 
ple. Nowhere is the sentiment of loyalty so 
deeply rooted as in Russia ; nowhere is " that 
divinity which doth hedge a king " so sacred. 
The uneducated masses of Russia, even in our 
day, can imagine no limitation to the power of 
the Czar. " I believe in God in heaven, and the 
Czar on earth," is an article of the creed, which, 
even so late as the reign of the Emperor Nicho- 
las, they taught their children. 



28 



A BRIEF HISTORY OF RUSSIA, 



Amid all the horrors enacted by Ivan, the peo- 
ple looked upon him as their anointed sovereign, 
God's vicegerent, who had power over life and 
death, who alone could preserve the purity of 
the national religion, and save millions of souls 
from endless perdition. When sometimes, in his 
frenzies of passion, he would threaten to leave his 
throne, they would most abjectly entreat him to 
remain, offering their lives as a sacrifice to his 
righteous anger, if such should be his sovereign 
will and pleasure. 

The Russians of this period, though sunken in 
the deepest ignorance, imagined themselves the 
best informed people on earth ■ but among them 
astronomy, anatomy, and kindred sciences, were 
regarded as diabolical arts • the learning of their 
priests was confined mostly to a little Latin and 
less Greek * their only mode of reckoning was by 
means of balls strung upon strings, and the skins 
of wild beasts had just ceased to be their current 
money. Reading and writing were occult mys- 
teries confined to the learned few. 

For ages Russia had been ground down by a 
twofold despotism, — that of the sovereign and 
that of the Greek Church ; later, to these was 



A BRIEF HISTORY OF RUSSIA. 29 

added the savage Asiatic despotism of the Tar- 
tars. And yet this nation of slaves bore the 
yoke uncomplainingly, believing it to have been 
imposed by God. 

A father in his thatched hut was as despotic as 
the czar on his throne : he had power over the 
lives of his children, he could sell them into 
slavery. Russian wives had less freedom than 
their Asiatic sisters, and were treated with great 
barbarity. Prisoners of war were slaves ; insol- 
vent debtors were given to their creditors; the 
poor man could sell himself to the rich man. 

Slaves must imbibe the vices of their enslavers, 
and the Russian character of this day exhibits 
traces of its vile Tartar servitude. National 
pride and personal honor were crushed out of 
the Russian heart, and cunning and greed had 
usurped their place. With the Tartars came the 
knout and all sorts of corporal punishments. 
The manners and customs of the people were 
borrowed from the Greeks as well as the Tartars, 
and showed generally the worst traits of both. 
Every individual of a family was involved in the 
ruin of one of its members. To leave the coun- 
try was rebellion and treason : there was no 



30 A BRIEF HISTORY OF RUSSIA. 

asylum from the all-prevailing despotism of the 
czar. Always in danger from civil war and out- 
side invasion, the natural ferocity of both prince 
and people was aggravated by fear. 

FEODOR, 1584-1598. 

Ivan IV., dying, committed his eldest son and 
heir to the guardianship of the Council of Boyars, 
at the head of which was his brother-in-law, Boris 
Godunof. This son, Feodor, though old enough 
to assume the sceptre, was weak both in body and 
mind ; a harmless imbecile, whose greatest pleas- 
ure from early childhood had been to hide away 
in the church-towers, and ring the bells. 

Boris Godunof knew that while Feodor lived 
he could remain supreme in power, and that at 
his death (an event which could not be long de- 
layed) he might, were it not for one obstacle that 
stood in his way, assume the title of Czar. This 
obstacle was a boy of ten years, Dmitri, the son 
of the seventh wife of Ivan IV. 

On the afternoon of May 15, 1591, this lad 
Dmitri, who is represented as a mad, ferocious 
little imp, was found with his throat cut in the 
courtyard of the royal palace at Uglitch, where 



A BRIEF HISTORY OF RUSSIA. 31 

he lived with his mother, the dowager Czarina 
Mary. As Boris alone had interest in the death 
of the czarowitch, he was generally supposed to 
have instigated the murder. Seven years after, 
Feodor, the last male representative of the line 
of Rurik, died. This house had reigned nearly 
eight centuries, and had given fifty-two sovereigns 
to the empire. 

GO DUN OF, 1598-1604. 

Boris attained the summit of his ambition : 
he was crowned Czar of Russia. He ruled with 
an iron hand, and so insulated the throne by the 
terror of his name and deeds, that, though remote 
branches of the line of Rurik still existed, none 
dared aspire to the sovereignty. He exiled the 
great princes whom he could not cajole or coerce, 
and he won over the petty nobles by chaining 
down the wandering peasantry to the soil. Of 
Tartar descent, and fully imbued with the savage 
spirit of Asiatic despotism, Boris Godunof was 
just the man to oppress Russia with the heavy 
yoke of serfdom at a time when bondage to the 
soil had ceased in the rest of Europe. 

The administration of Boris was brilliant and 



32 A BRIEF HISTORY OF RUSSIA. 

able* Under his rule, Russia won a name both 
in diplomacy and arms \ but, though respected 
abroad, the czar was feared and hated at home. 
The noblest and best families were in exile. 
Crushed under the heel of a ruthless despotism, 
the people had become sad and sullen. Joy was 
dead, and a dim, brooding horror had usurped 
its place. The minstrels who had been wont to 
traverse the land were seen no more : their songs 
of war and love and chivalry, once so dear to high 
and low, were heard no longer. 

The Cossack peasantry, an industrious, peace- 
able race, fled in a body from the tyranny of 
Boris, taking refuge among their native steppes 
of Asia; and a horrible famine of three years' 
duration spread mourning and despair over the 
whole country. 

DMITRI THE IMPOSTOR, 1605. 

While the disasters of Russia were at their 
height, a report spread among the people, that it 
was a peasant-child, and not the czarowitch, who 
had been murdered ; that Dmitri was still living 
in Poland. 

The rise and fall of this false Dmitri form 



A BRIEF HISTORY OF RUSSIA. 33 

one of the most romantic episodes of Russian 
history. His real name was Gregory Otrepief; 
and he was a young monk who could both read 
and write. These accomplishments, rare at that 
day, had won him a place in the service of a 
Polish prince, who passed much time at the court 
of the czar. It is related, we know not how 
truly, that this prince one day gave his secretary 
a box on the ear, and that the youth immediately 
burst into tears, saying, " If you knew who I am, 
you would not treat me so." He then told a very 
plausible story, declaring that he was Dmitri, the 
true heir to the Russian throne. The story seems 
not to have made much impression upon the 
Polish prince at the time, but he afterwards 
espoused the impostor's cause. 

From some old servants of the Czarina Mary, 
Otrepief learned many particulars in the life of 
the murdered czarowitch. He also ascertained 
the names and titles of the officers who had 
been attached to the boy's person, and by some 
means obtained possession of a seal bearing 
Dmitri's initials, and a cross set with diamonds, 
said to have been his baptismal gift. 

Having well studied and prepared his part, he 



34 A BRIEF BIS TORY OF RUSSIA. 

begged permission to retire to his cloister. When 
asked how he could leave the court, where, with 
his talent and learning, a brilliant future might 
be in store for him, he replied, laughing, " By 
remaining here I should become a bishop, at the 
highest; but I mean to be Czar of Russia." 

This frequent declaration having reached the 
ears of Boris, he gave orders to have the crazy 
monk sent to a remote cloister, and thought no 
more about him. Otrepief set out under the 
escort of two monks, whom on the journey he 
won over to his side, persuading them to accom- 
pany him to Lithuania, where the czar had many 
open enemies. Whenever they tarried for the 
night at a wayside monastery, Otrepief would 
write on the wall, " I am Dmitri, son of Ivan IV. 
Although believed to be dead, I escaped from my * 
assassins. When I am upon my father's throne, 
I will recompense the generous men who now 
show me hospitality." 

Far and near the people caught up the tidings 
that the true heir was yet alive. The young 
monk was now twenty-two, — the age Dmitri 
would have been, if living. Those who had 
known the Czar Ivan in his youth fancied that 



A BRIEF HISTORY OF RUSSIA. 35 

Otrepief resembled him in form and feature, 
while his dark complexion and reddish hair were 
those of the Czarina Mary. Like Dmitri, he had 
one arm longer than the other, and two warts on 
the face, — one on the forehead, the other under 
the right eye. These marks of identity, together 
with the royal seal and the diamond cross, were 
regarded as ample proof that the young man was 
not an impostor. 

Many believed in the genuineness of his claims ; 
and very many, at heart incredulous, espoused his 
cause from motives of policy, or hatred to Boris 
Godunof, The Jesuits became his most zealous 
supporters, and the Pope's nuncio promised the 
aid of the sovereign pontiff, if Otrepief would 
promise, when he became czar, to further the in- 
terest of the Latin Church. Hatred to Russia 
alone would have made Sigismund, King of 
Poland, a willing ally of the impostor, had there 
not been other and stronger reasons for espous- 
ing his cause. The Cossacks of the Don flocked 
to the pretender's standard. The Ukraine de- 
clared for him, and he soon raised an army of 
fifteen thousand men, with which he appeared on 
the Russian frontier. Boris had already sent a 



36 A BRIEF HISTORY OF RUSSIA. 

force of fifty thousand against him. After some 
fruitless skirmishing, the decisive battle was 
fought on the 20th of January, 1605. 

Just before entering the fight, Dmitri stood in 
front of his army, and prayed fervently, commit- 
ting his righteous cause to the God of battles. 
He then addressed his soldiers, so exciting their 
enthusiasm by his glowing eloquence, that all, 
resolved to conquer, or die with their leader. 
The issue of the contest was for a long time 
doubtful i but the impostor remained master of 
the field. 

So profound a policy seemed to dictate all his 
actions, that many suppose him to have been a 
close student of Machiavelli. For reasons best 
known to himself, he was in no haste to enter 
Moscow and seize the crown, — that glittering 
prize which for three years had been the sole 
object of his dreams, and which was now just 
within his grasp. 

In a manifesto issued soon after his victory, 
he said, " Let Boris Godunof descend from the 
throne he has usurped, and in the solitude of 
the cloister seek to make his peace with Heaven. 
In that case I will forgive his crimes, and assure 
him of my protection. , ' 



A BRIEF HISTORY OF RUSSIA. 37 

Boris well knew that the Czarowitch Dmitri 
had been murdered by his express command ; 
but, tortured by remorse for his many crimes, he 
fancied that the avenger of blood was upon his 
track. The phantom of his youthful victim was 
ever before his diseased imagination : he believed 
that the son of Ivan IV. had really risen from his 
grave, and headed the victorious army that was 
about to enter Moscow and drive him from his 
throne. 

The autocrat trembled with fear ; but he gave 
no outward sign. His court, one of the most 
splendid in Europe, remained gorgeous as ever : 
he still sat at the council board, and directed the 
affairs of the empire. 

All this time he was plotting suicide ; but he 
resolved to die as he had lived, — a sovereign. 
Just after rising from a splendid banquet, given 
to some distinguished foreigners in the " gilded 
hall " of his palace, he was taken alarmingly ill, 
and in two hours expired. None doubted that 
his death was caused by poison, administered by 
his own hand. 

His son Feodor, a youth of sixteen, whom he 
had named as his successor, reigned just six 



38 A BRIEF HISTORY OF RUSSIA. 

weeks, and then, with his mother and sister 
Xenia, was cast into prison. Dmitri (for so we 
must call him) treated the royal captives with 
respect and kindness ; but six years after, in the 
next reign, Feodor was strangled. 

On the 20th of June, 1605, the impostor made 
his triumphal entry into Moscow, and was crowned 
in the palace of the czars. The people were wild 
with joy : this Dmitri, whoever he might be, had 
found a way to all their hearts. Possessed of a 
commanding and agreeable person, and a persua- 
sive eloquence, he was gracious and affable in 
manner, and yet dignified as became a sovereign. 
The brilliancy of his intellect seemed equalled 
only by the goodness of his heart. 

Just after his coronation, the false Dmitri, in 
sight of an admiring multitude, knelt in tears 
before the tomb of Ivan IV., and, kissing the 
stone with well-feigned transport, cried, " O 
father ! thy orphan reigns ; and this he owes to 
thy holy prayers." His emotion was contagious. 
All wept with him. 

The opening of his reign was auspicious. He 
surprised his ministers by his thorough acquaint- 
ance with the empire, its wants and resources, by 



A BRIEF HISTORY OF RUSSIA. 39 

his prodigious memory, and his rare executive 
ability. He set about reforming abuses, and 
showed himself a man who would have neither 
favorite nor master. On both public and private 
occasions he laid aside the usual solemn etiquette 
of the czars, and was always easy of approach. 
Every Sunday and Wednesday he appeared at 
the threshold of his palace to listen to the griev- 
ances of the people, and receive their petitions 
with his own hand. The good of his subjects 
appeared to be the one great wish of his heart. 

He was so humane and moderate in the use 
of victory, that those who believed him an im- 
postor began to wish he had really been born 
to the purple. " I have sworn not to shed Chris- 
tian blood," he said ; " and I will keep my oath. 
There are two ways of governing an empire, — 
by tyranny and by generosity. I choose the lat- 
ter. I will not be a tyrant." 

Dmitri had been a month in Moscow, and, to 
the great surprise of all, he had not yet seen his 
mother. At last it became noised abroad that 
the royal nun was about to quit the convent 
where Boris Godunof had compelled her to re- 
tire ; that she was advancing to Moscow. Dmitri 



40 A BRIEF HISTORY OF RUSSIA. 

went out to meet her, and, in a sumptuous tent 
which had been erected at Toininsk, he wel- 
comed the widow of Ivan IV. They were for a 
little time alone, probably arranging the part 
they were to act ; then they came out of the tent, 
and embraced with every token of the liveliest 
affection. Dmitri had said to the czarina, " You 
can have in me a good son or a severe master ; " 
and here, in the presence of all the people, she 
acknowledged the impostor as her son. 

The young czar led his alleged mother to the 
carriage which was to convey her to Moscow, 
and walked beside it bareheaded the greater 
portion of the way. He assigned her apartments 
in the Kremlin until he could have a magnificent 
palace built for her, and allowed her a household 
and a revenue befitting the mother of the czar. 
He visited her every day, and treated her with 
the most unbounded respect and affection ; even 
consulting her upon affairs of state, and joining 
her name with his in the ukases he issued. The 
most incredulous began to believe that this was 
really the czarina's son. 

The new czar still devoted himself with patient 
assiduity to the affairs of his empire, forming 



A BRIEF HISTORY OF RUSSIA. 41 

many schemes for reform at home, and aggran- 
dizement abroad. But his popularity was on the 
wane. His attachment to the Poles (the heredi- 
tary enemies of Russia), his preference for the 
Latin Church, his open contempt for Russian 
ignorance and for Russian manners, proved most 
disastrous to him, and at length wrought his 
ruin. 

During his stay in Poland, Otrepief had fallen 
in love with Marina, the young and beautiful 
daughter of the Palatine of Sendomir, and the 
father had given his consent to the marriage after 
the youthful wooer should become czar. 

The czar summoned his betrothed to Moscow. 
She came, attended by her parents and relatives 
and a numerous Polish retinue. On the 18th of 
May, 1606, the marriage was celebrated with 
great pomp. The Poles of the bride's retinue, 
however, bore themselves in the most arrogant 
and insulting manner towards the Russians, and 
the old, undying animosity was kindled anew. 

A sullen discontent reigned among the people. 
The czar had already surrounded himself with 
Polish counsellors and favorites ; he had derided 
the old Russian traditions and customs, and, 



42 A BRIEF HISTORY OF RUSSIA, 

though nominally an adherent of the Greek 
Church, was more than suspected of being a 
Papist at heart. But the greatest sin of all was 
this marriage with an unbaptized woman, — the 
Greek Church baptizes only by immersion, — a 
Polish heretic. 

Discontent rose to fury, when some evil-minded 
individuals circulated a report that the czar's 
body-guard, all Polish soldiers, in order to terrify 
the Russians with the power of the new sovereign, 
were about to begin an indiscriminate massacre 
among the populace. The clergy went from 
house to house, calling on all true sons of the 
Church to rise and avenge the insults their faith 
had received from the heretic Dmitri and his 
Polish allies. 

Prince Vassili Shuiski was the leader of the 
rebellion. He had before headed a conspiracy 
against the new czar, and had been sentenced to 
Siberia. But Dmitri with his usual good-nature 
had pardoned his bitterest and most powerful 
enemy, and even given him a place in the coun- 
cils of the empire. 

At daybreak on the 24th of May, the whole city 
was in open rebellion. Dmitri was warned of his 



A BRIEF HISTORY OF RUSSIA. 43 

danger, but he would not listen. " I hold Mos- 
cow and the empire in the hollow of my hand/' 
he said, and laughed at the fears of the officers of 
the guard. 

" Orthodox Christians," shouted Shuiski, " death 
to the heretic ! " Thousands of voices took up 
the cry, " Death to the heretic ! " The great 
bell was rung, and the three thousand bells of 
Moscow answered it. The houses where the 
Poles lodged had been marked with chalk ; and 
the Russians, bursting open the doors, began to 
massacre the slumbering inmates. 

The palace of the czar was stormed by an 
armed mob, shouting, " Death to the impostor ! " 
Dmitri seized a sword, and defended himself with 
great bravery. He is said to have slain several 
of the conspirators with his own hand. The 
guards, also, defended their master to the last, 
many losing their lives in a vain effort to save 
him. Finding resistance useless, Dmitri at length 
leaped from a back-window of the palace, and in 
the fall broke his leg. Fainting with pain, he 
was seized by the infuriated mob, his groans 
being answered only by jeers and insults. He 
was not put to death at once, as his assassins 



44 A BRIEF HISTORY OF RUSSIA. 

wished to prolong his sufferings. His imperial 
robes were torn from him, and he was invested 
with the caftan of a pastry-cook. 

" Look at the czar of all the Russias ! " shouted 
the mob : " he has now put on the dress which 
best befits him." 

" Dog of a bastard ! " cried one of the nobles, 
" tell us who you are, and whence you come." 

Dmitri replied firmly and distinctly, — 

" Every one of you knows that I am your czar, 
the legitimate son of Ivan IV." 

" Monk Otrepief," said Prince Shuiski, " con- 
fess yourself an impostor, that God, before whom 
you are shortly to appear, may have mercy on 
your soul." 

" I am the Czar Dmitri," replied Otrepief, still 
unwavering. "This is not the first time that 
rebellious subjects, led astray by traitors, have 
dared lay hands on the sacred person of their 
sovereign; but such crimes never go unpun- 
ished." 

And with this falsehood on his lips he died, 
shot through the heart by a Russian merchant 
named Valuief, who, forcing his way through the 
mob, cried, " Why talk so long with this accursed 



A BRIEF HISTORY 01 RUSSIA. 45 

heretic? This is the way I'll shrive the Polish 
piper ! " 

Otrepief s death was the signal for a general 
massacre of the Poles. " Down with the Pope ! 
death to the heretics ! " was the cry. For six 
hours the streets of Moscow ran blood, and more 
than a thousand Poles were slain. Marina and 
her father, concealed by some friendly Russians, 
escaped amid the general confusion ; but they 
were afterwards imprisoned, and kept in close 
confinement for years. After a life of many 
vicissitudes, Marina ended her days in prison. 

The body of the impostor was burned, and his 
ashes were scattered to the four winds. But new 
Dmitris were to rise from those ashes. Rumors 
that Dmitri was not dead, that he had escaped in 
the tumult, that the mutilated body exhibited 
as his to the populace was not that of the czar, 
became rife in the land. Four swift horses were 
missing from the imperial stables, and it was 
currently reported that three horsemen in Russian 
costume, but speaking Polish, had been ferried 
across the Okra. One of them had given the 
ferryman six ducats, saying, "You have ferried 
the czar ; when he returns to Moscow with a 



46 A BRIEF HISTORY OF RUSSIA. 

Polish army, he will not fail to requite the ser- 
vice." Encouraged by the success of the first 
impostor, several other pretenders to the throne 
appeared, each claiming to be the true Dmitri. 
All were in time silenced, though not without 
much bloodshed. 

VASSILI SHUISKI, 1606-1610. 

Vassili Shuiski succeeded Otrepief as czar ; 
but, after a stormy reign of four years, he was 
deposed, and cast into prison, where he ended 
his days. One great noble after another grasped 
the sceptre, only to be deposed, perhaps put to 
death, by a more powerful rival, for none of 
these princes ever dreamed of showing mercy 
to a fallen foe. It was a period of anarchy 
and civil warfare, during which the patriotism 
and resolution of the clergy alone prevented the 
utter ruin of Russia. 

THE DYNASTY OF THE ROMANOFFS. 

In .November, 1612, the throne being vacant, 
-the JBoyars met in council, and despatched letters 
to every town in the empire, summoning the 
clergy, nobility, and citizens to send delegates at 



A BRIEF HISTORY OF RUSSIA, 47 

once to Moscow, with full power to meet in the 
national assembly, and proceed to the election 
of a czar. A fast of three days was appointed, 
that the people might invoke God's blessing on 
the choice of a new sovereign. This fast was 
most religiously observed throughout the land. 

MICHAEL ROMANOFF, 1613-1645. 

The day of election came : it was in Lent of 
the year 16 13. The choice at length fell upon 
Michael Romanoff, a youth of sixteen, personally 
unknown, but recommended by the virtues of his 
father, a high dignitary of the Greek Church. 
The Romanoffs, a family long distinguished for 
brilliant public service and exalted patriotism, 
were, through the female branch, connected with 
the royal line of Rurik. 

Before assuming the crown, Michael bound 
himself by the most solemn oaths to protect the 
Greek Church, to seek no revenge for injuries 
done his family, to change none of the old laws, 
to make no new ones, to declare neither war nor 
peace, to decide upon nothing without the advice 
and consent of his council, to surrender his own 
estates, and incorporate them with the domains 
of the crown. 



48 A BRIEF HISTORY OF RUSSIA. 

The land was once more at peace ; pretendeis 
to the throne no longer appeared; old feuds were 
healed; diplomatic relations were formed with 
other countries ; and Russia began to take her 
place among the nations of Europe. During 
Michael's long reign, his object was peace rather 
than glory : his era was one of convalescence for 
Russia, wasted by so many years of war and 
tyranny. He was the founder of the present 
powerful dynasty of Romanoff. 

ALEXIS, 1645-1676. 

There have been but two dynasties in Russia, 
— that of Rurik, and that of the Romanoffs. 
Michael, the founder of the second dynasty, 
ruled wisely and well, although his reign was not 
brilliant, for thirty-two years, and then died, leav- 
ing the empire to his son Alexis, who, during 
a reign of thirty-one years, proved so humane, 
sagacious, and successful a prince, that he is 
often called in Russian annals, " the Father of 
his Country." He formed an alliance with Po- 
land against Gustavus Adolphus, neither coun- 
try being able to cope singly with the veterans 
of the Thirty-Years' War. The Swedish king 



A BRIEF HISTORY OF RUSSIA. 49 

was at length forced to submit to terms of peace ; 
Russia, as a reward for her assistance, receiving 
vast accessions of territory from Poland. 

Alexis promoted learning and the arts ; but 
his efforts to introduce into Russia the customs 
of more enlightened nations met with but slight 
success. Russia had been Asiatic under the 
Ruriks : the Romanoffs sought to make it Euro- 
pean , but progress was slow. The people, who 
were grossly ignorant, were wedded to the old 
customs and superstitions. Ere long, in Peter the 
Great was to arise a master-mind, who would 
civilize them, even against their will. 

FEODOR III., 1676-1682. 

Feodor, the son of Alexis, who succeeded to 
the throne at nineteen years of age, was a prince 
weak in body, but strong in mind. He insti- 
tuted many reforms, which his early death pre- 
vented being fully carried out. His aim was 
internal improvement rather than outside con- 
quest. The pride of the nobles had become 
insufferable, the family which could show the 
longest genealogical record being the most arro- 
gant. Feodor, under pretence of correcting 



50 A BRIEF HISTORY OF RUSSIA. 

certain errors in these records, ordered them 
to be brought to court. He then convoked 
an assembly, of the highest civic and clerical 
dignitaries of the realm, and, in an eloquent 
harangue, set forth the dissensions of which the 
records were so constant a source, and advised 
that they should be burned, the names and dig- 
nities of the noble families being first inscribed 
in a set of books opened for that purpose. The 
desired assent was given. The records, being 
heaped up in the courtyard of the palace, were 
set on fire ; and with them perished the ri- 
diculous assumptions of the old nobility of 
Russia. 

In accordance with Oriental custom, the czar 
had long been in the habit of choosing his con- 
sort from among his own people. On an ap- 
pointed day, the worthiest and most beautiful 
young girls from the noble families were invited 
to the imperial palace, that the czar might select 
a wife from among them. They came in most 
gorgeous apparel, and were entertained with 
great festivities, lasting often for days. During 
all this time, the prince critically and attentively 
watched every movement of the young ladies, 



A BRIEF HISTORY OF RUSSIA. 51 

even listening secretly to their most private con- 
versation. At length, having made his choice, 
he seated himself at table with his young guests, 
and there presented the favored one with a 
handkerchief and a ring, dismissing the rejected 
damsels with rich gifts. His choice was then 
declared in public, the future czarina receiving 
the title of crown princess. Alexis had chosen 
two wives in this manner. 

Feodor, having witnessed the bitter feud be- 
tween the two rival families into which his father 
had married, resolved to choose a wife of another 
nation. As he had already formed an ardent 
attachment to a Polish lady, inclination as well as 
principle led to this decision. The Church uttered 
its anathemas in vain : the young czar married the 
lady of his love. When, after a too brief reign of 
six years, Feodor died, " Moscow, " says a Rus- 
sian chronicler, " was plunged into as deep mourn- 
ing as Rome at the death of Titus." Feodor left 
no heir. Himself the son of Alexis' first mar- 
riage, he had six own sisters, and one own 
brother, Ivan. As Ivan was imbecile, Feodor 
chose his half-brother, Peter, the son of his 
father's second wife, Natalia, as his successor. 



52 A BRIEF HISTORY OF RUSSIA. 



PETER THE GREAT, 1689-1725. 

The family of the first wife resolved to retain 
the succession \ and Sophia, the eldest daughter 
of Alexis, a princess of great beauty and talent, 
united with a courage equal to any emergency, 
contested the crown, first in the name of her idiot 
brother, then in her own. The Naryskines, the 
family of the second wife, were equally active 
in pressing the claims of Peter, then a boy ten 
years old. 

Sophia at length gained over the Strelitz (Na- 
tional Guard), and let them loose on the adherents 
of Peter. A carnage of three days ensued, during 
which the two brothers of Natalia, and sixty of 
her kindred, were cruelly massacred. Natalia fled 
from the capital, taking with her the boy Peter. 
It is said that for sixty wersts she carried him in 
her arms, the Strelitz following close upon her 
path. Her strength began to fail ; and, in her 
terror and despair, she rushed into the convent of 
the Holy Trinity for sanctuary. She had just 
time to reach the altar, and place the child upon 
it, when, with yells of savage triumph, the mur- 
derous band entered the convent. One of them 



A BRIEF HISTORY OF RUSSIA. 53 

seized the boy, and was about to cut off his head, 
when the sound of horses' hoofs was heard out- 
side. The frightened ruffians fled ; and Peter 
the Great was preserved to Russia. 

Ivan was declared sovereign ; but, idiotic though 
he was, he had sense enough to know his unfit- 
ness to rule, and begged that Peter might be asso- 
ciated with him. The request was granted ; and 
on the 6th of May, 1681, Ivan and Peter , were 
crowned czars, Sophia being chosen regent on 
account of the imbecility of the one, and the youth 
of the other. Sophia, being now seated on the 
throne, began to take steps toward retaining it. 
Her first proceeding was the banishment of her 
brother, in his tender years, to an obscure village, 
where she gave him a guard of fifty profligate 
young men, hoping that evil associations would 
so debase him in body and mind as to render 
him unfit to reign. The vices of Peter's life — 
and they were many — may be ascribed to these 
corrupting influences : his virtues were his own. 

There were talent, education, and honor even, 
among these debased young men. Belonging to 
Peter's guard was a Lieutenant Timmermann, 
who gave him lessons in military science and 



54 A BRIEF HISTORY OF RUSSIA. 

mathematics : there was also a certain Lefort, a 
Genoese, of depraved morals, but a man who 
knew the world, and had been a close student of 
social life and of books. He had seen much 
diplomatic service, had mastered several lan- 
guages, and, with all his faults, cherished a sincere 
friendship for Peter. He acted as the young czar's 
tutor j and years after, when Peter had risen to 
the summit of power and greatness, Lefort be- 
came his most valued counsellor. He organized 
a military company of the fifty young men, and 
here Peter took his first lessons in the art of 
war. His mental abilities were of the highest 
order, and his advancement in all his studies was 
unusually rapid. While Sophia believed that 
her brother was becoming unfitted to rule, he 
was actually rising superior to the wild, baccha- 
nalian life around him, and preparing himself to 
act his part as one of the most able and well- 
informed of sovereigns. 

As Sophia was about to assert the claims of a 
false heir to the throne, — the reputed son of the 
imbecile Ivan, for whom she had negotiated a 
marriage, — Peter, at his mother's solicitation, 
married a young Polish lady, the daughter of 



A BRIEF HISTORY OF RUSSIA. 55 

Colonel Lapuchin, and soon after made his appear- 
ance in the National Assembly. The regent for a 
long time listened with incredulous contempt to the 
reports which were brought her of Peter's prog- 
ress ; but, being at length convinced of their truth, 
she began to fear him, and set about a series of 
long and wicked intrigues designed to compass 
his death. The intrigues were not successful. 
After many quarrels between the czar and the 
regent, the former triumphed, and forced his 
sister to leave the throne. She went on plotting 
against him, and he threw her into prison. Peter 
assumed the reins of government in 1689, when 
he was but seventeen years of age, giving nominal 
sovereignty and precedence to Ivan, who was 
really nothing but a puppet in his hands. Ivan's 
mock authority ended with his death, in 1696. 

Peter had learned from Lefort and Timmer- 
mann Russia's deficiency in all that makes the 
moral and material greatness of a nation, her 
inferiority in these respects to the other nations 
of Europe ; and his first efforts as czar were 
given to the creation of an army and a navy. 
He met with rapid success in the former work, 
but not in the latter. Nature had not designed 



56 A BRIEF HISTORY OF RUSSIA. 

Russia for a great naval power ; but Peter deter- 
mined that she should become such a power in 
spite of Nature. He enticed skilled engineers to 
Russia through the promise of liberal rewards, 
and had many ships built under their direction. 
Desirous of improving his empire in all respects, 
he sent many of the young nobles abroad to 
study the manners and customs of enlightened 
nations. Others were sent away to learn the art 
of war. At length, Peter resolved to make a 
tour himself in quest of information. 

He was twenty-four years of age when he set out 
on his travels. It was at a time when questions 
of the most vital importance were agitating all 
Europe, — the era of Louis XIV. of France, of 
Charles XII. of Sweden, of William the Stadt- 
holder of Holland. 

The czar left Russia in the guise of an inferior 
officer ; . proceeding through Prussia and Hanover 
to Amsterdam, where he took miserable lodgings 
near the dockyard of Saardam, among the fisher- 
men. Assuming the name of Peter Timmer- 
mann, he hired out with a ship-builder, working 
his regular hours, and receiving his wages, like the 
other workmen : and yet, from his wretched hut 



A BRIEF HISTORY OF RUSSIA. 57 

at Saardam, he kept an eye on the vast concerns 
of his empire, then at war with Turkey ; issuing 
orders to the army which resulted in signal 
victories. 

From Holland he went to England, taking 
up his residence in the dockyards at Deptford, 
where he was known as " Captain Peter.'' Many 
stories are told of his life here, — of the zeal with 
which he pursued his work and his inquiries. 
He cared nothing for the moral advancement of 
his country; but his whole heart was in Russia's 
material progress. So intense was his thirst for 
knowledge, that, while examining some old in- 
struments of Papal torture in Holland, he ex- 
pressed a great desire to see some one broken on 
the wheel ! When he offered one of his own men 
for that purpose, he could not understand why so 
reasonable a gratification should be denied him. 

From England he went to France; thence to 
Vienna : he was on the eve of going to Venice 
to inspect the naval armaments there, when he 
heard that Sophia had a second time incited the 
Strelitz to revolt. 

Hastening back to Russia in the most ungov- 
ernable fury, he took such dire vengeance that 



58 A BRIEF HISTORY OF RUSSIA. 

the whole empire trembled at mention of his 
name. He ordered the entire body of the Strelitz 
to be put to death, and very few escaped the 
cruel sentence. For five months, the axe, the 
gibbet, and the wheel were in constant activity in 
Russia. With his own hand, Peter sometimes 
performed the office of executioner. One day, 
with a wine-cup in one hand and an axe in the 
other, he smote off twenty heads within an hour, 
— one after every bumper of wine ! Having 
reason to suspect his wife of complicity in the 
revolt, he gave her the terrible punishment of 
the knout, and then, having divorced her, ban- 
ished her to the cloister for life. He had never 
loved his wife ; the marriage had been one of 
policy ; and when, as a member of the old Rus- 
sian party, she opposed his reforms, and attempted 
to thwart his plans, a deep hatred against her 
entered his heart. The Princess Sophia was 
sentenced to have her head shaved, and be shut 
up in a convent for life. There she lived under 
the name Marpha, and died broken-hearted in 
1704. 

The ruling idea of Peter's life was to make 
Russia the centre of trade between Europe and 



A BRIEF HISTORY OF RUSSIA. 59 

Asia. To attain this end, he must have outlet 
to the Baltic, and a canal connecting the Dwina 
and Volga Rivers, thus opening a communication 
between the northern seas and the Black and 
Caspian Seas in the south. In pursuance of this 
plan, he in 1703 laid the foundations of St. 
Petersburg. The site of the future capital was 
a vast morass, lying in the midst of pestilential 
swamps, and situated in a climate of sixty degrees 
north latitude, with a most rigorous winter lasting 
eight months of the year. No man but Peter 
would have dreamed of founding a city in such 
a place. 

Innumerable obstacles, among which was an 
almost entire lack of building-material, lay in the 
way; but Peter did not for a moment abandon 
his purpose ; and, before a year, the new city con- 
tained thirty thousand houses and huts. A hun- 
dred thousand workmen are said to have perished 
from hardship and exposure that first year. St. 
Petersburg exists to-day, a city of half a million 
souls ; but its foundations sink as far beneath the 
earth's surface as its splendid church-spires and 
palace-domes tower above it, for the whole city is 
built on piles, and its very existence is a miracle, 



60 A BRIEF HISTORY OF RUSSIA. 

a triumph of the audacity and power of man over 
the implacable forces of Nature. 

Conquest was not Peter's policy. His aim was 
to concentrate the powers of government, and 
civilize the people. He did not, however, think 
it necessary to civilize or to govern himself. 
" He gave a polish to his nation," says Voltaire, 
" and was himself a savage." It has been said 
of him, that, although the man was sometimes de- 
formed by cruelty and drunkenness, the sovereign 
was always great. With all his brutality, he had 
a taste for science and the fine arts, and earnestly 
sought their advancement. 

In one of Peter's campaigns against Charles 
XII., among the prisoners of war he had met a 
young Livonian peasant-girl seventeen years old. 
She came to one of his generals in tears for the 
loss of her husband, who had perished in the 
milee, and to whom she had been married only 
the day before. Peter first made her his mistress. 
In 1707 he privately married her, and for years 
after publicly acknowledged her as his wife. 
Upon her marriage and adoption into the Greek 
Church, her name was changed from Marpha to 
Catherine. 



A BRIEF HISTORY OF RUSSIA. 6 1 

CATHERINE, 1725-1727, 

was remarkable neither for beauty nor talent; 
but she was, in her youth, graceful in person, and 
pleasing in manner ; she had also great good 
sense, and a temper so sweet that she alone could 
quiet the czar in those mad frenzies of passion to 
which he was subject. Her devotion to Peter 
was boundless. She accompanied him every- 
where, even to scenes of war and danger; and 
her courage never faltered, even in the most 
trying hour. It is said that after the battle of 
Prurh, which was so disastrous to Russia, Cath- 
erine, by her genius, her heroism, and her influ- 
ence over the czar, saved the army and the 
empire. 

Nineteen years after his return from his first 
journeyings, Peter again set out on his travels ; 
and this time Catherine accompanied him. Al- 
though the czar was never ashamed of his peasant- 
wife, he would not take her to France, and have 
her subjected to the criticisms of the most pol- 
ished and heartless court in Europe. He left her 
behind in Holland. 

Peter was received everywhere with the most 



62 



A BRIEF HISTORY OF RUSSIA. 



profound respect. He knew all the languages of 
Europe, and, when he chose, could regulate his 
manners to the strictest rules of etiquette. He 
visited his old haunts, and that insatiable thirst 
for knowledge which had prompted his first travels 
remained with him still. Nothing escaped his 
observation. On their return, the czar and czari- 
na visited the royal family at Berlin. Frederick 
of Prussia, and Peter of Russia, had many traits 
in common, — the same blunt, soldierly qualities, 
the same contempt for vanity and luxury. The 
Prussian queen and princesses were, however, 
beings of different mould ; and we see from the 
pert letters of the Princess Wilhelmina that Peter 
and Catherine did not escape criticism at this 
court. The young princess writes, — 

" When Peter approached to embrace my 
mother (the queen), her Majesty looked as if 
she would rather be excused. The czar is tall 
and well-made : his face is handsome ; but there 
is in it a rudeness which inspires dread. He was 
dressed like a sailor, in a frock without lace or 
ornament. The czarina is short and lusty, re- 
markably coarse, and without grace or anima- 
tion. One need only see her to become satisfied 



A BRIEF HISTORY OF RUSSIA. 63 

of her ignoble birth. At the first blush you would 
take her for a German actress. Her clothes look 
as if bought at a doll-shop, every thing is so old- 
fashioned, and so bedecked with silver tinsel. 
She was decorated with a dozen orders, and 
portraits of saints and relics, which occasioned 
such a clatter when she walked, you would sup- 
pose an ass with bells was approaching." 

Peter, who might have formed an alliance with 
the highest princess of Europe, was always con- 
tent with his Catherine. Ever anxious to exalt 
her dignity, he founded the order of Saint Cath- 
erine in her honor, and had her publicly crowned 
empress. When at last, on the 28th of January, 
1725, he lay dying in her arms, he made motions 
to have pen and paper brought him, and with 
trembling hand wrote out his last commands. 
" Let every thing be given to " — were the only 
words that could be deciphered : but Catherine 
and her party affirmed that it had been the czar's 
intention to leave the throne to his wife, if she 
survived him ; that, with this end in view, her 
coronation as empress had taken place in May of 
the preceding year. 

Peter died in the fifty-third year of his age, of 



64 A BRIEF HISTORY OF RUSSIA. 

a fever brought on by reckless exposure in the 
rescue of a boat which had run aground upon the 
rocks. The only son of his marriage with Cath- 
erine having died in early childhood, it was sup- 
posed by many that he intended to settle the 
succession upon Anna Petrowna, his favorite 
daughter, a beautiful and amiable young princess ; 
but Catherine, with the aid of Menzikoff, seized 
the government. 

Peter the Great will always remain one of the 
most notable characters of history, — a man of 
sterling virtues united to glaring faults, and 
passions so ungovernable that they revive the 
memory of Ivan the Terrible. The two blackest 
crimes recorded against him are the murder of 
the Strelitz, and complicity in the death of Alexis 
his eldest son, the son of the wife he hated. 
This son, to whom Peter was always a stern judge 
rather than a tender parent, had in his earliest 
years, at his mother's knee, imbibed a spirit of 
opposition to his father ; and when, in manhood, 
that feeling broke out in open revolt, Alexis was 
tried, and sentenced to death. Immediately after, 
he died suddenly, from poison, which few doubted 
was given at his father's command. 



A BRIEF HISTORY OF RUSSIA. 65 

In Peter, a mind strong to do and dare, a will 
that defied opposition, and a courage that quailed 
before no danger, were united to herculean 
strength of body, and a colossal stature of six 
feet and four inches. Nature had formed him 
for a ruler of men, and he became their tyrant. 
"I am the state," he said; "the state is in me; 
all ought to be done for me, the absolute master, 
who owes to God alone an account of his con- 
duct." "All for the people, nothing through 
them," was his motto. He has been described 
as a merciless Procrustes, who cut men down to 
the dimensions of his iron bedstead. He car- 
ried out his reforms in the State with an utter 
disregard to the wishes of the people ; and so 
great were his innovations in the Church, where 
he abolished the office of patriarch, and took 
the rule into his own hands, that the priests 
really thought him Antichrist. But yet to him, 
more than to all others combined, Russia owes 
her power and greatness. He reconstructed the 
empire, reformed its manners and customs, and 
even changed the national instincts. The title 
of Czar not seeming to him equal to the dignity 
of his position, he ordered the synod and senate 



66 A BRIEF HISTORY OF RUSSIA, 

to proclaim him " Emperor and Autocrat of all 
the Russias," — a title which has been retained 
by his successors, although " czar " still remains 
a familiar and popular epithet for the sovereign. 
The obsequious senate also added the titles of 
"The Great/' and "Father of his Country." 

Catherine reigned two years ; and it would 
have been better for her fame if she had never 
reigned at all. Menzikoff, her prime-minister 
and favorite, was really supreme in power. This 
Menzikoff had risen from the ignoble position of 
pastry-cook's servant to the highest office within 
the gift of his sovereign. Peter, a judge of 
men, had invested him, although he was entirely 
uneducated, with the highest dignities of the 
state ; and now the concerns of the vast empire 
Peter had left were in the hands of two persons 
who could neither read nor write. 

The haughty old nobility of the realm could 
ill brook the sway of two such low-born, illiterate 
rulers. Menzikoff, who was possessed of great 
natural ability, cared neither for their scorn nor 
their hatred ; but the contempt, ridicule, and 
opposition which relentlessly pursued her, sank 
deep into Catherine's soul, and she sought refuge 



A BRIEF HISTORY OF RUSSIA. 6 J 

in dissipation. The virtues which had distin- 
guished her during Peter's lifetime seemed to 
have deserted her, although that humane dis- 
position, whose influence had often deterred the 
czar from acts of violence and cruelty, character- 
ized her to the last. She fell into habits of in- 
toxication, which hastened her death at the early 
age of thirty-eight. 

PETER II., 1727-1730. 

Soon after the death of Peter the Great, his 
daughter Anna was married with great pomp to 
the Duke of Holstein. Catherine had left the 
empire by will to Peter, the son of the ill-fated 
Alexis, a lad of eleven years ; and had chosen her 
daughters Anna and Elizabeth, Menzikoff, and 
six other personages of the court, a council of 
regency. A second article of her will enjoined 
a marriage between Peter and the daughter of 
Prince Menzikoff. 

Menzikoff soon managed to obtain the supreme 
power; but his cruelty and rapacity were so great, 
that a conspiracy was formed against him ; and 
he with his whole family, including the bride-elect, 
was banished to Siberia, where they all remained 
to the end of their days. 



68 A BRIEF HISTORY OF RUSSIA. 

Peter IL, under the tutelage of the Dalgowky 
family, one of the most ancient in Russia, reigned 
two years and nine months, when he died sud- 
denly of small-pox, at the age of sixteen, deeply 
regretted, for he was a youth of great promise. 
Even in his short career he performed many acts 
which endeared him to the people : among them 
were two which won him great applause from 
the old conservative party of the realm, — the 
removal of the capital back to Moscow, and the 
release of his grandmother from her unjust im- 
prisonment. The charges against this much-per- 
secuted lady were disproved : she was declared 
the only legitimate wife of Peter the Great ; and, 
loaded with riches and honor, she lived in Mos- 
cow to the end of her days. 

ANNA, 1730-1740. 

The male line of Romanoff became extinct in 
Peter II. ; but the female branch still existed in 
the persons of three daughters of Ivan, half- 
brother to Peter the Great. The second of these 
daughters, Anna, dowager-duchess of Courland, 
was elected to the throne. She proved an able 
and warlike princess, adopting Peter I. as her 



A BRIEF HISTORY OF RUSSIA. 69 

model in policy. Her reign of ten years would 
have been productive- of great blessings to the 
empire, if she had not been so much under the 
influence of her prime-minister and favorite, 
Biren, a bad and criminally-ambitious man. 

Anna left the empire, by will, to her great- 
nephew, Ivan, the grandson of her oldest sister, 
the Duchess of Mecklenburg, stipulating that 
Biren should administer the government until 
the child had attained his seventeenth year. 
Biren's cruelties were so great, that the people 
rose in rebellion, and banished him to Siberia, 
whither he had himself been the means of send- 
ing twenty thousand exiles. The infant sover- 
eign was also deposed, and placed in close con- 
finement, which terminated only at his death. 

ELIZABETH, 1741-1762, 

the youngest daughter of Peter the Great and 
Catherine, was crowned empress, and ruled for 
twenty years. She was a woman of narrow, 
superstitious ideas, of depraved morals, and pro- 
found dissimulation. Averse to business, and 
fond of pleasure, she left state affairs mostly to 
her ministers. Her one redeeming feature was 



70 A BRIEF HISTORY OF RUSSIA. 

an aversion to the taking of human life. She 
vowed that in her reign no* culprit should suffer 
death; but exile, the torture, and the knout — 
even worse punishments than death — were dealt 
out with a liberal hand. Elizabeth chose Charles 
Peter Ulric, the son of her deceased sister Anna, as 
her successor. 

PETER III., 1762, 

at the time of his aunt's death, had long been a 
resident at court, and, sixteen years previously, 
had married Sophia Augusta of Anhalt-Zerbst, 
who, upon her adoption into the Greek Church, 
received the baptismal name of Catherine. She 
is known to the world as the famous and infa- 
mous Catherine the Great. 

Peter had grown up under the evil influences 
of a corrupt court, where his education had been 
neglected, and his morals perverted ; but he pos- 
sessed many excellent traits of character. Frank, 
generous, and incapable of malice or revenge, 
his heart was always better than his head, 
He carried forward some necessary reforms, but 
made some very arbitrary innovations both in 
Church and State. Thoroughly German in all 
his feelings, his enthusiasm for Frederick the 



A BRIEF HISTORY OF RUSSIA. 71 

Great, whom he made his model in most things, 
amounted nearly to madness. 

As Peter was disfigured by small-pox, and 
possessed of no fascinations either of person or 
manner, he had excited Catherine's aversion from 
the first. There had long been entire estrange- 
ment between the royal pair, and Catherine knew 
that Peter was contemplating divorce : she knew, 
also, that her numerous infidelities had given 
him abundant cause. A conspiracy against the 
czar — headed, no doubt, by Catherine and her 
paramour, Gregory Orloff — resulted in his depo- 
sition, and, a week after, in his death by poison. 
He had reigned only one year. 

CATHERINE THE GREAT, 1762-1796. 

The conspirators placed Catherine upon the 
throne, and for thirty-four years she lived to dis- 
grace that ill-won dignity. Of all the bad women 
of history, unless, perhaps, we except Catherine 
de Medici, Catherine of Russia seems the worst. 
She has, to be sure, found her eulogists. She 
affected an interest in letters, and invited literary 
men to her court, chief among whom was Voltaire ; 
and they loaded her with flatteries. Frederick 



72 A BRIEF HISTORY OF RUSSIA. 

the Great used to call her his philosophic sister : 
an obsequious senate gave her the titles of " The 
Great,' 7 " The Wise,' 7 " The Mother of her Country." 
But we may safely affirm that those who flattered 
her most, at heart most thoroughly despised her. 
None can deny her talent, her energy, and her 
political sagacity • but her ability has been much 
overrated. She was really great only in wicked- 
ness. 

Bloodthirsty, revengeful, thoroughly selfish, un- 
scrupulously ambitious, a hypocrite, a tyrant, a 
sensualist, and an atheist, she had the fewest pos- 
sible redeeming virtues. 

Stimulated by vanity to the commencement of 
great undertakings (few of which she ever fin- 
ished), to the adoption of foreign customs and 
maxims of government for which her people were 
not prepared, waging wars solely for conquest and 
glory, all that she accomplished was of but small 
permanent benefit to Russia. 

During her whole reign, Catherine was engaged 
in wars mostly of aggression • and she was never 
known to hold a treaty sacred when interest 
demanded that it should be broken. Her sins 
against the acknowledged laws of nations were 



A BRIEF HISTORY OF RUSSIA, 73 

numerous and appalling; but the stupendous crime 
of her reign was the partition of Poland, which 
she carried out with a persistency and inhumanity 
far more revolting than that of her allies, Prussia 
and Austria, and in which she had the lion's 
share. She also wrested large territories from 
Turkey. It was her plan to drive the Moham- 
medans from Europe, and to erect on the dis- 
membered remains of the Turkish Empire a new 
sovereignty to be given to one of her lovers. 

Active in pushing forward so-called reforms 
when they would redound to her own glory, Cath- 
erine cared nothing for the real good of her 
people : she was capable of no exalted virtue. 
Self-laudation and self-gratification were her sole 
earthly aims. She always had money to lavish 
upon herself and upon her numerous lovers, yet 
never any to relieve the wants of her oppressed 
and starving people. We will not dwell upon 
her character ; for the details of her private life 
form one of the most polluted pages of history. 

Catherine is said to have possessed beauty; but 
it was of that demoniac sort which might have 
characterized the fallen angels. Her features, 
although not offensively masculine, were those of 



74 A BRIEF HISTORY OF RUSSIA. 

an ambitious woman. Rather above the medium 
height, her carriage was majestic, and she seemed 
one born to command. She was sprightly in 
her manner, and, though an atheist at heart, was 
outwardly devout. She made great literary pre- 
tensions, and, among other works, she wrote a 
history of her times ; but her knowledge was 
superficial, and her works were of so little merit, 
that they have not been considered worth pre- 
serving. 

Without a shadow of right to the throne her- 
self, she took good care to remove from her path 
the true heir, Ivan, who, ever since the beginning 
of Elizabeth's reign, had been immured in the 
grim fortress of Schlusselburg. At Catherine's 
instigation, he was at length assassinated. 

There is something inexpressibly mournful in 
the life of this young prince. From the age of 
fourteen months to his twenty-fifth year, he was a 
prisoner. Taught neither to read nor write, 
allowed none but the lowest associates, knowing 
nothing of the world beyond his prison-walls, his 
whole nature became imbruted ; and he had 
almost relapsed into idiocy, when death merci- 
fully came to his relief. 



A BRIEF HISTORY OF RUSSIA. 75 

There was another possible claimant to the 
throne, — a young and beautiful daughter of the 
Empress Elizabeth, whose only marriage had 
been a clandestine one to a singer. She lived 
in the most retired manner at St. Petersburg, 
where she was being educated under the name of 
the Princess Tarrakanoff. 

Prince Radzivill, indignant at Catherine for 
the wrongs she was heaping upon Poland, saw in 
this young girl an instrument of future revenge. 
Having gained over her guardians, he conveyed 
her with her governess to Rome. 

Catherine took prompt measures toward frus- 
trating his designs. She confiscated his Polish 
estates, so that his only resource in Rome was 
the money derived from the sale of his diamonds 
and other ornaments. These being nearly ex- 
hausted, Radzivill set out for Poland, leaving his 
ward and her governess in extremely reduced 
circumstances, which he hoped to relieve on his 
return. Upon his arrival in Poland, Catherine 
offered to restore his estates if he would bring 
the young princess back to Russia. He refused 
to comply with this condition ; but, as the price 
of his restoration to fortune, he promised not to 
press her claims to the throne. 



76 A BRIEF HISTORY OF RUSSIA, 

Alexis, one of the four brothers Orloff, — all of 
whom were the pliant and remorseless instruments 
of Catherine's will, — went to Leghorn at com- 
mand of the empress, and there laid a snare for 
the young princess. Securing the aid of a base 
Neapolitan intriguer named Ribas, he sent him 
to Rome, where the villain introduced himself as 
an Italian officer who had come to pay his re- 
spects to a princess in whose fortunes he felt the 
deepest interest. The destitution of the young 
princess appeared to call forth his deepest sympa- 
thy ; and he offered assistance, which was thank- 
fully received. 

Having by these acts fully won the confidence 
of the unsuspecting child, Ribas declared that he 
had come, commissioned by Alexis Orloff, to 
offer her the throne of Russia ; that, if she 
would consent to marry Orloff, he would head an 
insurrection in her favor. 

The young princess had already been informed 
by Prince Radzivill of her claim to her moth- 
er's throne, and the hopes he had fostered now 
seemed confirmed : so she, with fatal alacrity, 
yielded to the designs of those who sought her 
ruin. 



A BRIEF HISTORY OF RUSSIA. 77 

When, after a time, Alexis Orloff himself came 
to Rome, she gave him a joyful welcome; and 
when, as a part of his carefully-prepared instruc- 
tions, he declared that he had fallen in love with 
her, she believed him, and loved him in return ; 
for Orloff, who was still a young, handsome, 
and fascinating man, was well calculated to 
enslave the fancy of an inexperienced girl of 
sixteen. When he asked her hand in marriage, 
he won a grateful assent. 

Feigning a desire to have the marriage per- 
formed according to the Greek ritual, Orloff 
bribed villains to assume the office of priest and 
witnesses. Soon after the marriage, he told the 
pretended bride, that, as their stay in Rome ex- 
posed them to remark and criticism, their best 
course would be to repair to some other Italian 
city, and there await the revolution which was to 
place her on the throne. They went to Pisa, 
where Orloff hired a splendid palace, and where 
he seemed the most tender, devoted, and thought- 
ful of husbands, accompanying the princess 
everywhere, and apparently knowing no greater 
happiness than to gratify her tastes and wishes. 

The Russian squadron, under Admiral Gregg, 



78 A BRIEF HISTORY OF RUSSIA. 

had entered the port of Leghorn ; and Orloff, pre- 
tending that urgent business called him to that 
city, invited the princess to accompany him. 

On their arrival in Leghorn, they took apart- 
ments provided for them at the house of the 
English consul. The princess was treated with 
the utmost respect, ladies of the highest rank 
paying her marked attention. She found herself 
courted, flattered, and idolized • and in that bril- 
liant circle, of which she was the centre, it seemed 
the study of all to secure her some new pleasure. 
At the theatre, upon the promenade, wherever 
she appeared, she was the observed and admired 
of all. 

At length the princess, having heard glowing 
accounts of the splendor of the Russian ships, 
expressed a desire to visit the fleet. As her 
slightest wish was equivalent to a command, the 
request was joyfully granted ; and the next day 
was fixed upon for the visit. Meantime she was 
assured that every thing should be properly 
arranged for her reception. 

On arriving at the water, she was led to a boat 
with splendid awnings, where the English consul 
and several ladies took seats with her. A second 



A BRIEF HISTORY OF RUSSIA. 79 

boat conveyed Count Orloff and Admiral Gregg ; 
a third, the Russian and English officers. 

The boats put off from shore amid the cheers 
of an immense concourse of people ; and the fleet 
received the august party with music, salvos of 
artillery, and repeated huzzas. These honors, 
Orloff assured the princess, were paid to her as 
heiress to the Russian throne. As her boat came 
alongside the ship she was to enter, a splendid 
chair was let down ; and, seated in this, she was 
hoisted on deck. 

Scarce had she set foot on the ship when she 
was handcuffed, and ordered to descend into the 
hold. Having full faith in her supposed hus- 
band, she indignantly appealed to him for pro- 
tection ; but he was deaf to her prayers. She 
threw herself at his feet, and bathed them with 
her tears ; but tears could not move the man 
whose life had been one long record of crimes, 
— the man who had presented the poisoned cup 
to the Czar Peter at Catherine's command. 

The next day, the ship which bore the unhappy 
Princess Tarrakanoff .sailed for Russia. On 
arriving at St. Petersburg, the princess was im- 
mured in a gloomy fortress on the banks of the 
Neva. 



So A BRIEF HISTORY OF RUSSIA. 

The citizens of Leghorn, who had supposed 
the princess the lawful wife of Orloff, had in 
good faith paid her all the honors due to her 
rank, and were highly indignant at the infamous 
betrayal she had received in their very midst. 
The court of Tuscany at once complained of the 
outrage both to the courts of St. Petersburg and 
Vienna. Leopold of Austria made a formal pro- 
test ; other rulers also entered complaints against 
Orloff : but, upheld by Catherine, he braved un- 
blushingly the resentment of princes and people. 

The fate of the unfortunate Princess Tarraka- 
noff is involved in mystery, though it is generally 
supposed that she was drowned in the terrible 
inundation of the Neva which occurred in Sep- 
tember of the year 1777. If at that time an in- 
mate of the fortress, she must have perished ; for 
the water rose ten feet, and undermined the 
walls. It has been affirmed by some that she 
was murdered in her prison by Catherine's com- 
mand : others have declared that she escaped 
into Germany, where she lived and died in the 
strictest retirement. But the first supposition is 
probably the true one. 

Catherine II. died in 1796. 



A BRIEF HIS TOR Y OF RUSSIA. 81 

Voltaire called Catherine II. "the Semiramis 
of the North." Others have given her a title she 
more justly deserves, " the Louis XIV. of Rus- 
sia ; " for, both in its strength and weakness, her 
character was closely allied to that of the vain, 
pompous, despotic, voluptuous, yet able grand mo- 
narque of France. 

Catherine raised the Russian court to a high 
degree of splendor ; and, although she had reached 
the sixty-eighth year of her age, she seemed 
to have had no thought of the time when she 
must bid adieu to all earthly grandeur, to have 
made no provision for that one momentous event 
which comes alike to monarch and to slave. In 
the height of her power, in the midst of her ambi- 
tious dreams, she was suddenly stricken down by 
apoplexy. Death had come to her without a 
moment's warning ; and the vast empire, whose 
aggrandizement had been the one dream of her 
life, must pass to her son Paul, — the son whom 
from his birth she had hated and persecuted. 

PAUL I., 1796-1801. 

Peter the Great, by an ukase issued in 1722, 
had given the Russian sovereign the right of 



82 



A BRIEF HISTORY OF RUSSIA. 



choosing his successor, not limiting the choice 
even to members of the royal family. It had 
doubtless been Catherine's intention to exclude 
her son, and leave the succession to her grand- 
son, Alexander. She had grossly neglected Paul, 
kept him at a distance from court, and treated 
him with a more than contemptuous indifference ; 
even taking from him his two eldest sons, that 
she might herself superintend their education. 

Paul had fully returned his mother's hatred ; 
and one of the first acts of his reign was to re- 
peal the ukase of Peter the Great, and restore 
the succession by hereditary descent to the male 
line ; the crown to devolve upon a woman only 
when every male heir was extinct. Throughout 
Paul's brief reign, his policy, if he may be said 
to have had any policy as czar, was to undo every 
thing done by his mother. 

Catherine had not allowed her husband im- 
perial sepulture : he had been buried in the con- 
secrated ground surrounding the monastery of 
Saint Alexander-Nevsky. Paul had his father's 
remains taken from the grave, where they had 
lain for thirty-five years ; and at Catherine's fune- 
ral the coffin of her husband was placed beside 



A BRIEF HISTORY OF RUSSIA. 83 

her own, the two being connected by a true-lover's 
knot, bearing this inscription : " Divided in life, 
united in death." The two of Peter's murderers 
yet living, Alexis Orloff and Prince Baradinsky, 
were forced to stand on each side of the coffin as 
chief mourners. The prince nearly fainted ; but 
Orloff exhibited no emotion. 

Paul was twice married, — first to a princess of 
Hesse-Darmstadt, who died early; the second 
time to Maria of Wiirtemberg, a princess of rare 
beauty, talent, and virtue. She became the 
mother of nine children, — four sons, Alexander, 
Constantine, Nicholas, and Michael; and five 
daughters. 

There was nothing in Paul to awaken popular 
love or enthusiasm. " A madman in brain, and a 
Finn in feature," he came to the throne at forty- 
two years of age, with no knowledge of the 
mechanism of government, or of the people over 
whom he was to rule. Two objects seemed to be 
uppermost in his mind, — to wreak vengeance on 
the murderers of his father ; to pour contempt on 
the memory of his mother, by annulling all her 
enactments. He was not bad at heart ; yet, as 
czar, he made all tremble who approached him. 



84 A BRIEF HISTORY OF RUSSIA. 

His eccentricities (which really amounted to 
insanity), his violence, capriciousness, and unrea- 
soning despotism, soon made him many enemies ; 
and, in the fifth year of his reign, a conspiracy 
was formed against him at St. Petersburg, headed 
by some of the most influential men of the 
empire. The first intention seems to have been 
to induce the czar to abdicate in favor of his 
eldest son ; but his determined resistance led to 
his death in a scuffle with the chief conspirators, 
during which he was strangled. 

ALEXANDER L, 1801-1825. 

Alexander, who inherited the beauty, grace, 
and gentle disposition of his mother, ascended 
the throne at the age of twenty-four. He had 
been carefully educated at his grandmother's 
court ; the enlightened and conscientious, although 
free-thinking, Caesar Laharpe having been his 
chief tutor. Though he had early imbibed the 
philosophical principles of Catherine and Fred- 
erick the Great, they could not long hold sway 
over a mind naturally inclined to religious mysti- 
cism. 

When Alexander came to the throne, the ruling 



A BRIEF HISTORY OF RUSSIA. 85 

ideas of Peter the Great had been carried out. 
The material reformers had had their day : what 
the empire now most needed was a moral re- 
former in its czar. The young ruler sought to be 
such a reformer in the truest sense. Fired by a 
nobler ambition than Peter the Great or Cath- 
erine had ever known, with all the enthusiasm of 
youth and the courage of inexperience, he set 
about those moral reforms which alone can give 
true grandeur to a nation. Striving to forget old 
animosities at home and abroad, adopting a 
pacific policy toward foreign nations, he soon won 
the enviable title of "Prince of Peace." His 
early reforms were many and great : among them 
were the abolition of punishment by torture, and 
the public traffic in human beings. He also 
abolished the secret Inquisition, which had held 
such fatal sway during the reign of Paul. The 
emancipation of the serfs was a measure which 
lay very near his heart ; but Russia was not in 
his day prepared for that momentous event. He 
allowed the serfs to purchase with their freedom 
portions of land to be held in their own right. 
• While doing all in his power to improve the 

condition of that unfortunate class, he doubtless 



86 A BRIEF HISTORY OF RUSSIA, 

paved the way for the abolition of serfdom in 
Russia. He removed many civil and social re- 
straints which had pressed heavily upon the 
people. But time would fail to tell of his many 
beneficent and praiseworthy acts. 

During his wars with Napoleon, his efforts in 
behalf of the wounded of all nations were so 
great, that the Russian Senate proposed to bestow 
upon him the title of "The Blessed." Declaring 
that he had done nothing more than his duty, he 
modestly declined a title any sovereign might be 
proud to wear. 

He aided his excellent mother in establishing 
those benevolent institutions which have rendered 
her name so dear to the Russian people ; and he 
showed his zeal for education by instituting or 
remodelling seven universities, by founding two 
hundred gymnasiums or normal schools, and two 
thousand elementary schools. He was zealous 
in every good work; his heart bled for the woes 
and sufferings of humanity ; and the oppressed 
millions of Europe began to look to him as their 
champion and deliverer. 

His accession had been hailed with delight 
throughout the civilized world. The great Ger- 



A BRIEF HISTORY OF RUSSIA, 87 

man poet Klopstock, in an ode celebrating that 
event, addressed the young emperor as the tute- 
lary angel of the human race ; and the Russians, 
so long ground down by despotism, greeted the 
new sovereign and the new era with transports of 
enthusiasm never before known among a people 
by nature reticent and grave. 

Alexander, animated by the noblest impulses, 
did his best to realize the hopes of his country 
and the world. Possessed of all those qualities 
which win love and admiration, he was the hope 
and the pride of his people. He was the most 
amiable of men ; and with his amiable qualities 
were blended a deep sensibility, a sincere respect 
for the dignity of human nature, and that tinge 
of romance and sentiment which lends such 
charm to youth, all the more potent when, as in 
his case, it is united to the highest of earthly 
stations. Of majestic figure and striking personal 
beauty, there was a seductive grace in his manner 
and conversation that fascinated all. 

But, with all his admirable qualities, he had 
not the strength of character requisite in a 
reformer: the gentleness of his disposition con- 
stantly stood in his way. To push forward re- 



88 A BRIEF HISTORY OF RUSSIA, 
s 

forms in a country so ignorant, and so wedded to 
old customs, as Russia, one needed to be made 
of the sterner stuff cf Peter the Great. 

Ere long, the theories of youth lost their 
charm : the glowing ideal ever before the chiv- 
alrous, romantic soul of this liberal-minded sov- 
ereign of a despotic empire, became more and 
more difficult of realization. Russia, unprepared 
for liberal institutions, chose darkness rather 
than light ; and Alexander had a sad awakening 
from the Utopian dreams of his youth. He 
found himself pursued by the bitterest opposition 
and ingratitude ; and discouraged at the magni- 
tude of the work he had attempted, at the hostility 
to reform of the very classes he had sought most 
to benefit, he at length sank into supineness and 
melancholy, and grossly neglected the concerns 
of the empire, — concerns too vast and intricate 
for a man of his by no means comprehensive 
intellect. Early in his reign, Alexander cherished 
a secret determination to abdicate the throne ; 
and he never fully gave up the idea. Soon after 
his accession, he wrote to Laharpe, "When 
Providence shall by its blessing have enabled me 
to raise Russia to the degree of welfare I desire, 



A BRIEF HISTORY OF RUSSIA. 89 

the first thing I shall do will be to cast aside the 
burthen of administration, and retire into some 
quiet corner of Europe, where I may peacefully 
enjoy the happiness secured for my country." 
To quote the words of one of his Russian biog- 
raphers, " Years glided on. The prince who in 
early youth had dreamed of a private life on the 
banks of the Rhine had twice crossed that river 
with the laurel of victory and the olive-branch of 
peace, and had avenged the destruction of Mos- 
cow by the preservation of Paris. Russia was 
blazing with the glory of her monarch ; Europe 
was proclaiming him her savior. But amid the 
splendor of all this greatness, the loftiest ever 
attained by man, Alexander found no happiness 
upon his throne. The hope of the youth was 
still lurking in his heart ; and he, on several 
different occasions, sought to realize it." 

After having pursued his progressive policy for 
nearly twenty years, he intrusted the conduct of 
affairs to his ministers, at the head of whom 
stood Count Araktcheieff, a representative of the 
" Old Russian " party, and, as such, opposed to 
reform. Through means which have never yet 
been fully understood, he gained almost entire 



90 A BRIEF HISTORY OF RUSSIA. 

ascendency over the czar ; and the many acts of 
the last years of Alexander's reign, so contrary 
to his own enlightened views, may be laid to the 
charge of this man, who had become all-powerful 
in Russia. Yielding to his counsels, Alexander 
turned a deaf ear to the appeals of the Greeks, 
his religious allies and proteges ; he lent no moral 
or material aid to that final struggle against Tur- 
key, in which Greece, by the justice of her cause 
and the heroism of her deeds, won the respect 
and sympathy of all Christendom. 

Alexander joined the coalition against Napo- 
leon in 1805, and was present at the battle of 
Austerlitz, where the allied armies of Russia and 
Austria suffered such a disastrous defeat; yet, 
always given to hero-worship, he soon after 
became dazzled by the genius and success of 
the French emperor. So far did his infatuation 
go, that he entered into Napoleon's plans for 
conquest, and even wished to give him his sister 
Catherine in marriage ; but the proposed alliance 
so much desired by both emperors was prevented 
by the determined opposition of the empress- 
mother. 

Yielding to the all-powerful influence of this 



A BRIEF HISTORY OF RUSSIA. 91 

master-mind, Alexander accepted the secret con- 
ditions of the Treaty of Tilsit; and on the 7th 
of July, 1807, the two emperors met on a raft 
in the river Niemen, — Napoleon as the mon- 
arch of the West, Alexander as the sovereign of 
the East, — and coolly set about dividing Europe 
and the world between them. 

A rupture soon followed, which in 18 12 broke 
out into open hostilities. Alexander joined the 
great coalition against Napoleon, bringing into 
the field an army of about nine hundred thousand 
men. 

After the fall of the French emperor, Alexan- 
der, believing that, with the vast armies at his 
command, it was his mission to act as pacificator 
of Europe, founded, with Austria and Prussia, 
the celebrated " Holy Alliance," whose ostensi- 
ble object was to regulate the affairs of Europe 
on the basis of Christian charity. Alexander was 
the heart and soul of this alliance, and in its 
inception he was no doubt sincere ; but, always 
easily influenced by minds stronger than his own, 
in carrying out its plans he was insidiously led 
on to adopt the measures of that " supple, tor- 
tuous, dark diplomatist of the old system," — 
Prince de Metternich. 



92 A BRIEF HISTORY OF RUSSIA, 

Alexander's religious views had changed. At 
the time of the burning of Moscow, he professed 
to have received divine illumination. In a con- 
versation with Bishop Eylart in the year 1818, he 
said, " I felt a void in my heart, accompanied by 
a strange presentiment. I went, I came, I sought 
diversion. The burning of Moscow at last illu- 
mined my soul • and the judgments of God, mani- 
fested upon our snow-covered battle-fields, filled 
me with an ardent faith I had never known 
before. From that moment I learned to know 
God as he is revealed in the Holy Scriptures ; 
from that moment I began to understand his 
will and his laws as I do now. The resolution 
to devote to God alone my glory, my person, and 
my reign, has since then matured and strength- 
ened within me. From that time I became 
another man ; and to the deliverance of Europe 
from ruin do I owe my own safety and deliver- 
ance." 

His piety seems to have been deep and sin- 
cere ; and so liberal was his faith, that he prayed 
with equal fervor in Greek, Roman, or Protestant 
churches. 

A lady had exercised a very marked influence 



A BRIEF HISTORY OF RUSSIA. 93 

upon his religious life : she was the celebrated 
Baroness Krudener, who, after a youth of fri- 
volity, had in her mature years embraced a life 
of holiness, and who, becoming imbued with the 
doctrines of the Moravian brethren and the 
ideas of the well-known mystic visionary Stilling, 
felt that she had received a call to preach the 
gospel. This lady had also, years before, won 
a deep influence over the gifted and spiritual 
Queen Louise of Prussia. 

When upon his second visit to Paris, in 1S15, 
Alexander prepared the draft of the Holy Alli- 
ance, Madame Krudener was in the city, and is 
supposed to have had some share in the work. 

Alexander said to the priest of Geneva, " I am 
about to quit France ; and I wish, before my 
departure, to render a public act of thanksgiving 
to God the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost, and to 
invite the people to act in obedience to the gos- 
pel. I wish the Emperor of Austria and the 
King of Prussia to join me in this act of adora- 
tion, that the people may see us, like the wise 
men of the East, acknowledging the superior 
authority of God the Saviour. Beseech God 
with me to dispose my allies to sign it." With 



94 A BRIEF HISTORY OF RUSSIA. 

these words the Russian emperor handed to the 
priest the draft of the Holy Alliance, which was 
duly signed by the allied sovereigns. 

From the time of his father's tragic death, — 
in which none have ever thought of implicating 
him, — Alexander's life was imbittered by melan- 
choly. He sometimes tried to throw off this 
mental depression by taking part in the gayeties 
of his splendid court, but he more frequently 
took refuge in religious mysticism. " Seated 
upon one of the most exalted thrones, Alexander 
leads the life of an anchorite," wrote one who 
knew him well. " He enjoys no pleasures : hav- 
ing scarcely reached his mid-career, in the prime 
of manhood, he leads a solitary and miserable 
existence," wrote another. 

Doubtless one cause of his melancholy was his 
estrangement from his wife. When her favorite 
grandson was only seventeen years of age, 
Catherine II. had brought about a marriage 
between him and the Princess Elizabeth of 
Baden, who was a mere child, a year younger 
than himself, and his equal in grace, beauty, and 
amiability. 

Never was there a lovelier or a more loving 



A BRIEF HISTORY OF RUSSIA. 95 

pair ; but, as years passed, Elizabeth's place in 
her husband's heart became filled by another, — 
her inferior in all save beauty. Elizabeth strove 
to hide her sorrow from the world, to find solace 
for her wounded heart in acts of beneficence and 
charity \ but a grief too deep for words or lamen- 
tation had entered her soul, and was slowly 
undermining the sources of her life. 

After long years of estrangement, Alexander 
awoke from his unworthy dream, and, with all 
the ardor of a first affection, returned to the wife 
of his youth, who had never for a moment ceased 
to love him. By the most delicate and affec- 
tionate attentions he sought to make her forget 
the past; and, her health being seriously im- 
paired, he proposed to accompany her to her 
native land, as the physicians had decided that 
she must leave Russia. Elizabeth replied to all 
proposals for change of air and scene, that the 
wife of the Emperor of Russia must not leave her 
husband's country to die in a foreign land ; and 
at length the imperial pair concluded to repair to 
Taganrog, a small town on the Sea of Azof. 

Here love and happiness wrought a wonderful 
transformation in the empress ; her health daily 



g6 A BRIEF HISTORY OF RUSSIA. 

improved, and in the charm of her society the 
emperor forgot the melancholy to which he had 
been for years a prey. But, before they had been 
three months at Taganrog, Alexander was seized 
with a fever produced by the climate, which, in 
his case, was aggravated by a chronic tendency to 
erysipelas. Here, on the 1st of December, 1825, 
in the twenty-fifth year of his reign, died Alexan- 
der I., the emperor of fifty millions of people, 
soothed to the last by the love and care of her to 
whom his wandering heart had too late returned, 
— the true, devoted Elizabeth, who might, through 
all these years, have been the good angel of his 
life. To her were given his last words of love ; 
to her his dying message, " I never felt greater 
inward peace" When speech had failed, he mo- 
tioned her to draw near; and, a few moments 
before he breathed his last, he tenderly pressed 
her hand. When all was over, Elizabeth herself 
closed the dear eyes, and raising the cross above 
the mute form of him, whom, since the first day 
of her marriage, she had never ceased to love, 
embraced and blessed him. " Saviour, forgive 
all my sins," she prayed: "it is thy will to take 
my beloved one from me." Then, retiring to her 



A BRIEF HISTORY OF RUSSIA. 97 

apartment, she gave her tears free vent. Again 
and again she returned to the side of the de- 
parted one, and breathed to Heaven the most 
fervent prayers for his soul. 

Shortly after the death of her husband, Eliza- 
beth wrote this well-known letter to the empress- 
mother : — 

" Mamma, our angel is in heaven, and I still 
exist upon the earth. Who would have thought 
that I, feeble and wasted, could have survived 
him ? Mamma, do not abandon me ; for I am 
utterly alone in this world of grief. Our dear 
departed one wears in death his own benevolent 
expression : his smile proves to me that he is 
happy, and that he sees other things than he 
beheld while he was with us. My only consola- 
tion under this irreparable loss is that I shall not 
long survive him ; that I hope to rejoin him 
soon." 

The hope was realized • for, in less than five 
months, this loveliest, most amiable of princesses 
was no more. All who gazed upon that white, 
wasted face, to which the beauty of youth, so early 
faded, had come back in death, saw there the 
face of an angel. 



98 A BRIEF HISTORY OF RUSSIA. 

"I myself knew that august pair," says the 
Russian poet Relief!, who was destined soon to 
wear a martyr's crown. "He was charming as 
hope, she delightful as felicity. It seems but yes- 
terday when Catherine adorned their youthful 
brows with nuptial coronets of roses, soon to be 
succeeded by diadems. But, alas ! all too soon 
did the Genius of Death crown their pale brows 
with poppies ! What, then, is life ? " 

Never had a ruler been more beloved than 
Alexander ; never was one more lamented. The 
whole land seemed stricken dumb by a mighty 
sorrow, and the awful silence brooding over the 
nation was broken only by wailings for the 
dead. As at the death of William of Orange, 
"the little children cried in the streets" And 
yet Alexander had not escaped the common lot 
of sovereigns. Hatred and malignity had pur- 
sued him : at the time of his death, his enemies 
were forming a conspiracy against his life. The 
plot was revealed to him, and his last hours were 
imbittered by the ingratitude and treason of those 
who should have been the firmest supporters of 
his throne. 

The character of Alexander is one offering 



A BRIEF HISTORY OF RUSSIA. 99 

many contradictions, but the general judgment 
concerning him may be summed up in the words 
of Chateaubriand : " He may, perhaps, often do. 
wrong; but it is ever his desire to do right." 

The English author of " Revelations of Russia " 
says of him, " The character of the Emperor Alex- 
ander presents a singular mixture of liberal views, 
benevolence, and finesse, joined to indolent weak- 
ness." Rabbe, author of "UHistoire d 'Alexandre" 
pronounces him brilliant, but superficial, an ideal- 
ist and a theorist, with a mind full of borrowed 
ideas and disconnected systems. 

Napoleon at St. Helena said of him to Count- 
Las Casas, " The Emperor of Russia is infinitely 
superior: he possesses abilities, grace and infor- 
mation ; he is fascinating ; but you cannot trust 
him ; he is not sincere, he is a true Greek of the 
lower empire. He is, or pretends to be, a meta- 
physician ; his faults are those of his education. 
... If I die here, he will be my successor in 
Europe." 

The reader of the history of those times must 
form his own opinion of the man, who, for twenty- 
five years, played so momentous a part in the 
affairs of Europe ; who was the soul of the coali- 
tion that defeated Napoleon. 



ioo A BRIEF HISTORY OF RUSSIA. 



The unprejudiced student of his character must 
believe in the genuineness of his lofty sentiments, 
in the sincerity of his efforts for the good of his 
people and the world. A man of great refinement 
and deep sensibility, of progressive and enlightened 
ideas, he was called to the rule of a vast, half-sav- 
age empire made up of many races, each wedded 
to its own ideas and traditions. Never did royal 
philanthropist and reformer mark out for himself 
a task so difficult as was Alexander's ; and may 
we not well believe that his errors, which were 
many, were always errors of the head, and not of 
the heart ? 

NICHOLAS I., 1825-1855. 

The only children of Alexander and Elizabeth, 
two daughters, had died in infancy; and, at his 
death, his brother Constantine was heir to the 
throne. He had three brothers, — Constantine, 
nearly two years younger than himself, Nich- 
olas nineteen, and Michael twenty-one, years 
younger. The order of succession being now 
firmly established in Russia, it was naturally ex- 
pected that the crown would devolve upon the 
Grand Duke Constantine. As he was the only 
one of the three sons of Paul who resembled his 



A BRIEF HISTORY OF RUSSIA. 101 

father, the prospect of his rule was far from agree- 
able ; but the masses of the Russian people — 
loyal even to idolatry, and fatalists by birth and 
education — were prepared to accept meekly and 
uncomplainingly the sovereign sent them by God. 

All of Paul's sons, excepting Constantine, 
inherited the beauty of their mother. Constan- 
tine was uglier even than his father, having the 
same Calmuck physiognomy in an exaggerated 
degree. His nose lay flat against his face ; thick 
white brows, always in motion, lent a strange, 
ferocious expression to his deep-set blue eyes ; 
while the lower part of his face was red, heavy, 
and uncouth. He had also all the wild turbulence, 
obstinacy, and eccentricity of the Emperor Paul, 
while his abilities were far inferior. 

Wayward and petulant, and not without a cer- 
tain kind of quick wit, his oddities as a child 
had greatly amused his grandmother, Catherine 
II., while his mother, as is the way with mothers, 
had petted and fondled, most of all her children, 
this strange being, who seemed like a changeling 
in the royal nest. 

He hated books, and set his face as a flint 
against study. " I will not read," he said to one 



102 A BRIEF HISTORY OF RUSSIA, 

of his tutors : "you read ; and the more you lead, 
the bigger fool you are." He would learn noth- 
ing but military tactics, and these were always 
his delight. As he grew older, he was extremely 
fond of drilling soldiers, and was a very martinet 
in matters of military equipment and discipline, 
often showing great severity for the slightest 
breach of soldiery duty or etiquette. "I hate 
war," he once said, " it so spoils the soldiers' 
uniforms." 

He had real military talent. When only twenty 
years of age, he distinguished himself in the Ital- 
ian campaign • and, in token of his approbation, 
his father gave him the title of Caesarovitch, of 
which he was very proud, and which he retained 
through life. He also showed great bravery at 
the battle of Austerlitz. 

He was not bad at heart ; but, when aroused 
to anger, his outward aspect and demeanor were 
those of a savage. He showed great reverence 
for the memory of his father, and was the most 
tender and respectful of sons to his widowed 
mother. He cherished a blind idolatry for the 
imperial dignity, and his brother Alexander was 
his idol. Content to be a mere cipher by the 



A BRIEF BIS TORY OF RUSSIA. 103 

side of the great czar, so different in all respects 
from himself, he accompanied him everywhere, 
showing himself at all times the most loyal and 
obsequious of subjects. He proved that a tender, 
sympathetic heart lay beneath the rough exterior 
by which alone the world knew and judged him, 
when, in the campaign of 18 12, many of the 
French wounded fell into his hands. If these 
unfortunate men had been his own brothers, he 
could not have treated them with greater care or 
kindness. 

In 18 15 Alexander confided to him the mili- 
tary government of Poland, and he took up his 
residence in Warsaw. His rule was tyrannical in 
the extreme. He shut himself up in his palace, 
being visible to the people only at military re- 
views ; but he took the greatest interest in the 
internal prosperity of Poland, and soon learned 
to love his adopted country better than his own. 

Catherine II. in the last year of her life had 
married Constantine to the Princess Julienne, 
sister of the late King Leopold of Belgium. The 
bridegroom was seventeen, the bride fifteen years 
of age. There was no affection on either side ; 
and, two years after the marriage, the unloving 



104 A BRIEF HISTORY OF RUSSIA. 

pair separated by mutual consent. The young 
wife returned to Germany, where, in the enjoy- 
ment of a liberal pension and the title of Grand 
Duchess, she lived to the end of her days. Noth- 
ing could ever induce her to return to Russia. 

Even Constantine was to have his romance, 
though it came to him late in life. In the year 
1820 he fell desperately in love with Jeanne Gud- 
zinska, a young Polish countess ; and, having 
obtained a divorce from his wife Julienne by 
imperial ukase, he married Jeanne. This lady, 
fragile and delicate in constitution, refined in 
manners, and endowed with every mental and 
moral charm, exerted a wonderful influence over 
the rough, eccentric Constantine, whose affections 
never for a moment swerved from their first and 
only object. To the last, Constantine treated his 
wife with the chivalrous devotion and tenderness 
of a lover. For her sake he resigned the proud- 
est crown on earth. 

Jeanne not being of royal birth, the marriage 
had been, as it is called, by the left hand ; and, to 
gain the emperor's consent to it, Constantine had 
relinquished his title to the throne. Alexander, 
knowing that the fantastic character of his brother 



A BRIEF HISTORY OF RUSSIA. 105 

might revive in the empire the memory of Paul, 
and perhaps result in a like mournful tragedy, 
seems to have made this marriage a pretext for 
carrying out a plan of excluding Constantine 
from the succession. 

The agreement had been secret, being known 
probably only to the emperor, the empress-mother, 
and the Grand Duke Nicholas. The act of abdi- 
cation, duly signed and sealed, had been depos- 
ited with the senate^ to be opened only after 
Alexander's death. 

Tidings had reached St. Petersburg that the 
czar, whose illness at Taganrog was well known, 
was convalescent, and a thanksgiving service was 
being held in the royal chapel ; but, in the midst 
of the Te Deum, a messenger entered, announ- 
cing Alexander's death. The empress-mother 
fainted ; and, on being restored to consciousness, 
her first words were, " Poor Russia ! " She prob- 
ably distrusted the good faith of Constantine's 
resignation, and feared a bloody strife between 
the rival brothers. Nicholas at once ordered a 
priest to place the gospels and the cross before 
his mother, and took the oath of allegiance to 
Constantine, who was that very day proclaimed 



io6 A BRIEF HISTORY OF RUSSIA. 

emperor. Messengers were at once despatched 
to Warsaw to confer with Constantine ; and, after 
an interregnum of three weeks, written docu- 
ments came from him, confirming his resignation 
in the most emphatic and solemn manner, and 
offering loyal allegiance to his brother. Nicholas 
no longer hesitated, and was immediately pro- 
claimed czar. 

Constantine seems never to have regretted his 
decision. He knew that he was unfit to rule ; 
he knew, also, that his wife — a Roman Catholic 
in faith, and not of royal birth — could never at 
court receive the honors due to an empress ; that 
his children would be ineligible to the throne. 
Loving Poland with all the depth of his really 
warm nature, supremely happy in a domestic life 
which had wrought an entire change in his char- 
acter, he gladly resigned to his younger and more 
ambitious brother the " glorious fatigues of great- 
ness/ 7 the pomps and burdens of a throne. 

Nicholas mounted the throne on the steps of 
a bloody revolution, which shook Russia to its 
centre. None of the three brothers of Alexander 
were personally beloved • but Constantine was 
the favorite of the army, and the army declared 



A BRIEF HISTORY OF RUSSIA. 107 

for him. Many citizens of the capital joined in 
the revolt ; for it seemed a thing past belief that 
Constantine had, of his own accord, relinquished 
the most brilliant throne on earth. 

The capital had for years been plotting rebel- 
lion, — a rebellion not so much against the person 
of the czar as against the principle of autocracy; 
and the supposed usurpation of Nicholas became 
a pretext for revolt, of which the discontented 
spirits gladly availed themselves. 

Nicholas suppressed the rebellion with great 
vigor and cruelty. For eighty years, Russia had 
not beheld an execution ; but the new czar re- 
stored the death-penalty, and many of the best 
and bravest of the land perished on the scaffold. 
Many more were banished to Siberia and the 
steppes of the Caucasus, — that military Siberia of 
Russia ; and the emperor, years after all occasion 
for severity had ceased, continued to glut his 
revenge. The darkest trait in the character of 
Nicholas was his implacability. He never forgave 
or forgot an injury. 

From the commencement of his reign, he re- 
solved to govern by his absolute will, without 
being hampered by a constitution. He was an 



io8 A BRIEF HISTORY OF RUSSIA. 

autocrat in the broadest sense of the word : 
" despotism poured out of his nostrils." The 
absolute and irresponsible master of more than 
sixty millions of souls, he soon began to think 
himself infallible. As years passed on, his char- 
acter grew hard as steel. He loved Russia with 
his whole heart, and desired her highest good ; 
but he wanted to reform her in his own way. She 
must have no mil but his ; she must never throw 
off the swaddling-clothes of infancy. 

He was a man to project, but not to carry for- 
ward, great reforms. His intellect w T as not of 
broad range ; he had not, like his brother Alex- 
ander, been educated for a throne. With all his 
haughty obstinacy, he was vacillating of purpose. 
He saw and bewailed the evils of serfdom, but he 
did not abolish them. Perhaps he dared not : a 
sense of insecurity, born of the revolution which 
had ushered in his reign, haunted him con- 
tinually. 

More absolute than even the sovereigns of 
Persia or Turkey, which have a moral as well as a 
legislative code in the Koran, he deemed himself 
the one supreme source from which emanated all 
power and dignity for his people, — the vicegerent 
of God on earth. 



A BRIEF HISTORY OF RUSSIA. 109 

Chateaubriand says of Alexander I., " While 
sincere as a man in all that concerned humanity, 
he was cunning as a demi-Greek in all that related 
to politics." The words could not apply to Nich- 
olas, whose character was open as the day. He 
was a tyrant and a despot without the least eva- 
sion or concealment. 

In a catechism published for Russian children 
in 1832 by order of Nicholas, and entitled " The 
Worship that should be rendered the Emperor," 
we find the following question and answer : — 

" How ought want of respect and fidelity to- 
ward the emperor to be regarded ? " 

Ans. " As the most detestable sin, as the most 
horrible crime." 

In another place, this catechism declares that 
disobedience to the emperor is the same as dis- 
obedience to God himself, who will recompense 
homage and obedience to the emperor in another 
world, and punish severely and throughout eter- 
nity those who may fail to render them. 

" As Christ and the apostles meekly submitted 
to the decree which condemned them to death, 
so ought we also to know how to suffer and be 
silent," is another of the precious doctrines Rus- 



no A BRIEF HISTORY OF RUSSIA. 

sian priests and parents in this reign were required 
to teach their children. 

Nicholas was possessed of a feverish activity. 
No man in Russia worked so hard as he. He 
would rise at four in the morning, and, throwing 
an old military cloak around his shoulders, set 
about the herculean task of managing everything, 
even the minutest details of his vast empire. He 
wanted to see and hear and know all ; he could 
not endure that any thing should go on without 
his cognizance. " Not a mouse can stir in Rus- 
sia without permission from the czar," wrote a 
traveller of that day. 

We need not repeat that oft-told tale of the 
woes and wrongs he heaped upon Poland. His- 
tory records no greater crimes than his against 
that unhappy country. " I will make a Siberia 
of Poland, and a Poland of Siberia," he declared; 
and he did his best to verify the words. Up to 
1848 he had banished more than sixty thousand 
Poles to Siberia. Political proscription was fol- 
lowed by religious persecution. The czar was 
determined that Poland, physically, politically, 
and spiritually, should be blotted from the map 
of nations. 



A BRIEF HISTORY OF RUSSIA. in 

By a ukase issued Feb. 14, 1832, the Russian 
authorities of Poland were ordered to seize upon 
all male children of the poorer classes, who com- 
posed nineteen-twentieths of the inhabitants, and 
send them to Minsk to be enrolled in battalions, 
and brought up for the military service of the 
government. Even in infancy they were torn 
from parents' arms, from charity-schools and 
foundling-hospitals, and, under brutal guards of 
Cossacks, borne by hundreds from their homes, 
followed often for miles by agonized, imploring 
mothers. Happy were those who died of hunger 
and hardship on the way, and thus escaped the 
untold woes of the life before them. Frederic La 
Croix, a French writer upon Russia, pronounces 
this the most atrocious crime in her history, the 
most atrocious crime in all history. 

As Nicholas was supreme autocrat of Russia, 
he sought to be autocrat of Europe. He aspired 
to rule in the councils of nations, to make the 
whole world tremble at his power. He was the 
haughtiest sovereign on earth, and looked with 
lofty disdain on the lesser potentates around him. 

The hereditary ambition of Russia is the ab- 
sorption of Turkey, and with it the possession of 



112 A BRIEF HISTORY OF RUSSIA. 

Constantinople and the Bosphorus, through which 
alone Russia can hope to become a great mari- 
time power. " I must have the key that unlocks 
the door of my house// the Czar Alexander said 
to Napoleon at Tilsit. 

Nicholas thought himself powerful enough to 
carry out this long-cherished enterprise ; he had 
no idea that other nations would dare oppose it. 
When he found that France and England and 
Sardinia would unite against him, he still per- 
sisted in his purpose. This fatal and obstinate 
persistency brought on the Crimean war, whose 
events are familiar to all. The Greek cross was 
lowered before the crescent. Russia was weak- 
ened and humiliated by a series of defeats ; and, 
in the darkest hour of the struggle, the autocrat 
of all the Russias, a disappointed, almost heart- 
broken man, lay down to die. 

When he felt that his end was near, he said to 
his son Alexander, "You know that the good of 
Russia has been the sole end of all my solicitude 
and all my efforts. I desired to leave the empire 
fully organized, guaranteed from danger within 
and without, completely tranquil and happy. 
God wills otherwise. The burden will be heavy 



A BRIEF HISTORY OF RUSSIA, 113 

for you." In his last testament he says, " I die 
filled with ardent love for our glorious Russia, 
which I have served with all my soul, with faith 
and with sincerity. I regret that I have not been 
able to do all the good I so sincerely desired." 

No stings of conscience visited the death-bed 
of the great czar. This man, guilty of so many 
crimes against humanity, who had caused such 
unutterable woe to thousands upon thousands of 
his subjects, died with the heavenly hope and 
pious resignation of a saint. "I have always 
prayed for Russia and for you while on earth," 
he said to his eldest son and heir : " I will pray 
for you in heaven." 

Many virtues adorned the private life of the 
Emperor Nicholas. His domestic affections were 
strong and ardent ; he was the most devoted of 
husbands and fathers. Those rigid forms of eti- 
quette upon which he so strenuously insisted in 
his public life w T ere banished from his family-life. 
He married at an early age the Princess Char- 
lotte, eldest daughter of William III. of Prussia, 
and of the "angel good and angel fair," Queen 
Louise. 

This princess, who, upon her baptism into the 



J 14 A BRIEF HISTORY OF RUSSIA. 

Greek Church, received the name of Alexandra 
Feodorovna, although naturally amiable and pleas- 
ing, did not possess her mother's almost angelic 
loveliness of mind and person. Long residence 
at the Russian court as the wife of the haughtiest 
of sovereigns developed in her a distance and 
superciliousness of manner that did not win hearts. 
She adored her husband, and her love was fully- 
returned : no happier domestic life could be found 
in all Russia. 

There were seven children in the royal house- 
hold, — four sons and three daughters, — all in- 
heriting the fine physical traits of both parents. 
" The royal family of Russia is the handsomest 
family that ever lived/' wrote one who saw these 
children in their blossoming time. One daughter, 
Olga, who became Queen of Wiirtemberg, was 
ideally beautiful. The Emperor Nicholas in his 
prime w r as considered the handsomest man in 
Europe. The emperor was very proud of his 
family, and loved his wife and children with an 
ardor partly due to natural affection, but yet full 
of that unbounded egotism which adored all in 
any way united to himself by ties of kindred. 

He liked to have his entire family, children 



A BRIEF HISTORY OF RUSSIA. 115 

and grandchildren, around him. When his daugh- 
ter Marie, who had married a son of Eugene Beau- 
harnais, was left a widow with five children, they 
all came to live at the royal palace, and were 
treated with the tenderest affection. 

Constantine, the second son of Nicholas, was 
" a faithful copy of his sire." Alexander was 
cast in a gentler mould, and his father had 
many misgivings as to his being possessed of 
those stern qualities which he himself deemed 
indispensable in a czar of Russia. Knowing that 
Constantine would be sure to carry out his own 
policy, Nicholas at one time seriously contem- 
plated choosing him heir. However unlawful 
such a proceeding might be, it would be allowed 
to the autocrat of Russia, who was above all law. 
These two brothers, who were entirely dissimilar 
in character, never lived amicably together; 
Constantine always wanted to dictate, and he 
expected Alexander to obey. Constantine is now 
President of the Council of the Empire. 

ALEXANDER II., 1855-. 

At twenty years of age, Alexander set out to 
visit the different courts of Europe. He is thus 
described by the Marquis de Custine : — 



Ii6 A BRIEF HISTORY OF RUSSIA. 

" I had been told by Russian travellers that 
the beauty of the heir was a phenomenon, and 
it is really very striking. He has an agreeable 
figure and a noble bearing. His complexion is 
pale ; there is an expression of melancholy in 
his eyes ; he evidently suffers. His gracious 
mouth is not without sweetness ; his Greek pro- 
file recalls the antique medallions and the por- 
traits of the Empress Catherine. He has a 
melodious voice, rare in his family, — a gift he 
has received from his mother. His stature is tall, 
— too tall for so young a man : he reminds one 
of his uncle, the Emperor Alexander, at the same 
age. His air is modest, without timidity; he 
impresses you as a perfectly educated man. If 
he ever rules, he will make himself obeyed by 
love rather than fear." 

This young grand duke, like his sons, the 
Grand Dukes Alexis and Sergius, who have been 
so recently our country's honored guests, charmed 
all by the amenity of his manners. While his 
father won only respect and awe, he won hearts. 
He had a poetic soul : the well-known poet Jou~ 
kowsky, the Lamartine of Russia, had assisted in 
his education. 



A BRIEF HISTORY OF RUSSIA. 117 

And yet this prince, at the height of worldly 
fortune, and with such a splendid destiny be- 
fore him, was devoured by a secret melancholy. 
The Russian court in Nicholas' day was far 
from being a cheerful place ; and it is possible 
that the czar, whose ideas differed so widely in 
all things from those of his son, had crushed 
that sensitive soul by his sternness and exactions. 
At the early age of sixteen, the age when the 
Russian heir to the throne attains his majority, 
he had been placed in command of a corps of 
soldiers, and constant military exercise had seri- 
ously impaired his health. 

The young heir was melancholy ; this fact was 
evident to all. The czar decided that he should 
travel, and, while visiting at foreign courts, choose 
for himself a wife. 

The author of "Souvenirs Personnels de V Emfie- 
reur Alexandre II." says that the young heir went 
from court to court. The quest upon which his 
father had sent him was well known : he received 
everywhere the warmest greetings and the most 
flattering attentions. At length he appeared at 
Hesse-Darmstadt. The Grand Duke Louis had 
several fair daughters, neither of whom would be 



Ii8 A BRIEF HISTORY OF RUSSIA, 



likely to say him nay ; but he was apparently on 
the point of leaving this court, fancy-free, as he 
had left all the others, when, to the great surprise 
of the ducal family, he asked the hand of the 
youngest daughter, Marie, in marriage. 

This young girl — who was modest, timid, and 
retiring — was slighted by her more brilliant sis- 
ters, and almost ignored by her father. She had 
not dreamed of fascinating: the roval visitor. 
While her sisters had been decked out in jewels 
and gorgeous array, she had sat apart in her 
simple white dress, unheeded, but finding her 
solace in intellectual and artistic pursuits. " It 
was the very charm of this reserve, this poetry of 
isolation, that attracted the notice of Alexander : 
in the resigned melancholy of this young soul 
he found an echo of his own." Marie, however, 
had other attractions ; she was lovely in face and 
form, and possessed an elevated and cultivated 
mind. 

No Russian grand duke could marry a wife 
outside the pale of his church without forfeiting 
his birthright : Marie, therefore, went to Russia 
to study the language, and be baptized into the 
faith of her future husband. Catholic princesses 



A BRIEF HISTORY OF RUSSIA. 119 

will not abjure their faith even to obtain a crown : 
Protestant princesses have more elastic con- 
sciences, and the Russian emperors have, thus 
far, married Protestant wives. The nuptials of 
Alexander and Marie were celebrated with great 
pomp on the 16th of April, 1841. 

The Empress Marie-Alexandrovna still lives, 
adding new lustre to the Russian throne by her 
graces, her virtues, and her intellect. She is rep- 
resented as a woman of exquisite refinement and 
culture, as well-informed and progressive, and in 
full sympathy with her husband's plans for the 
improvement of his people. 

The happy domestic life of the Russian royal 
family was saddened in 1865 by the death of 
the heir-apparent, a young man of great promise, 
who died at the age of twenty-two. He was 
betrothed to the Princess Dagmar of Denmark. 
She has since married the present heir ; and they 
have a son who will one day, if he lives, succeed 
to the Russian throne. 

Alexander II. has five sons living, — Alexan- 
der, Vladimir, Alexis, Sergius, and Paul, — and a 
daughter, who is the wife of Queen Victoria's 
second son, the Duke of Edinburgh. 



120 A BRIEF HISTORY OF RUSSIA. 



The Russian emperor is now in the twenty- 
third year of his reign, and the sixtieth of his 
age. His first concern upon attaining the throne 
was to bring the Crimean war, which he had 
always opposed, to a speedy end. He gained his 
purpose at the cost of some humiliating but 
unavoidable concessions to the allied powers. 
He has not abandoned Russia's ancient policy 
of territorial extension, but his efforts have been 
mainly directed to the improvement of his empire. 

The grandest achievement of his reign, the 
grandest ever achieved by any sovereign, is the 
emancipation of the serfs. He abolished serf- 
dom throughout Russia by imperial ukase in 
1861, and throughout Poland in 1864, carrying out 
the measure in defiance of the bitterest opposi- 
tion, showing a courage and a persistency equal 
to that of Nicholas. Thirty millions of people 
now thank the Czar Alexander II. for deliverance 
from a thraldom which had endured for two cen- 
turies and a half. 

Alexander II. has instituted and carried through 
other great reforms. He has fostered learning 
and art ; he has encouraged the construction of 
railways and lines of telegraph throughout his 



A BRIEF HISTORY OF RUSSIA, 121 



empire, and has in every way sought to promote 
the moral and material happiness of his people. 
While he has not granted entire religious freedom, 
or liberty of the press, he has done away with 
many of the restrictions which pressed so heavily 
in his father's reign. 

Russia is always unjust to Poland; and, 
although the present emperor has expressed 
much sympathy for her patriotism and her suffer- 
ings, his Polish policy has been the one great 
injustice of his reign. He suppressed the insur- 
rection of 1863-64 with great severity, and he 
has emphatically warned this humiliated but 
heroic people to cherish no further ideas of na- 
tional independence. He has, however, intro- 
duced some of his greatest reforms into Poland ; 
and, if she can be content to remain a Russian 
province, she has nothing to fear at his hands. 



The atrocities committed by the Turks in 1876 
on the Christians of Servia and Bulgaria produced 
intense excitement in Russia, and caused pro- 
tests and threats from the emperor, who, as the 



122 A BRIEF HISTORY OF RUSSIA. 



champion of the Greek Church, demanded pro- 
tection for the Servian and Bulgarian Christians. 
The several steps in the diplomatic game — 
played by Russians, Turks, English, Germans, 
Austrians, and French — which preceded the 
present war are well known. 

Whatever pretexts for this war either side may 
give, the world knows that it is the hereditary 
contest for supremacy on the Bosphorus again 
renewed. " The power which possesses Con- 
stantinople must be mistress of the world " is a 
saying old as Napoleon I., and attributed to him. 
Both Russia and Turkey appear to believe its 
truth. 

On the 24th of April the emperor issued his 
manifesto, of which these are the concluding 
words : — 

" Having exhausted pacific efforts, we are 
compelled by the haughty obstinacy of the Porte 
to proceed to more decisive acts, feeling that 
equity and our own dignity enjoin it. By her 
refusal, Turkey places us under the necessity of 
having recourse to arms. Profoundly convinced 
of the justice of our cause, and humbly commit- 
ting ourselves to the grace and help of the Most 



A BRIEF HISTORY OF RUSSIA. 123 

High, we make known to our faithful subjects 
that the moment foreseen, when we pronounced 
words to which all Russia responded with com- 
plete unanimity, has now arrived. . . . And now, 
invoking the blessing of God upon our valiant 
armies, we give them the order to cross the Turk- 
ish frontier." 

Fifty thousand Russians crossed the frontier 
that day. The war already begun involves only 
Russia and Turkey now ; but there are national 
fears, ambitions, and jealousies, hardly concealed 
at present, which may easily kindle into a war- 
flame throughout all Europe, and, with religious 
fanaticism aroused, may draw a large part of 
Asia into the conflict. 



